Carrie Lam, Hong Kong's chief executive, speaks during a news conference in Hong Kong, China, on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019. Lam, formally withdrew legislation to allow extraditions to China, a political retreat that may help ease — but not end -- months of unrest in the Asian financial hub.

Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam reiterated on Thursday that the controversial bill that led to mass protests will be fully withdrawn with "no debate."

She said at a regular press briefing on Thursday morning that the bill "will be fully withdrawn, there will be no debate and no voting."

On Wednesday evening, Lam had announced the formal withdrawal of a contentious extradition bill that has sparked months of mass protests that have turned increasingly violent. The bill, if passed, would have paved the way for people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China for trial.

It was one of five demands by protesters, with the others including the retraction any characterization of the movement as a "riot," and to drop all charges against protesters.

The withdrawal now gave demonstrators "no excuse to continue violence," China's state-owned newspaper China Daily said on Thursday.

Hong Kong, a British colony, returned to Chinese rule in 1997. It is now a special administrative region under the "one country, two systems" principle that gives its citizens some legal and economic freedoms not given in mainland China. But there have been worries among Hong Kong citizens that their civil rights are being eroded under Beijing's rule.

Lam's withdrawal of the bill was not "too little, too late," Bernard Chan, convener of the executive council of Hong Kong told CNBC before Lam's Thursday briefing.

In fact, it's all just been "a bit of a technicality" for her to formally announce the withdrawal, he said, as Lam had already said in June that the bill was suspended and "dead."