HONG KONG — Looming over a modest Chinese medicine shop here that sells dried deer penises for virility and bat feces for vision is a 40-story monolith of dark glass and gray steel: the Hong Kong offices of the Chinese Communist Party.

For Wu Beihan, who sells traditional remedies from ancient wood drawers at the medicine shop, the dark-suited cadres next door have become an unexpected source of extra business this winter, snapping up anxiety relievers like winter mulberry leaves.

“They have worried hearts and are coming here more often,” he said.

Anxiety is understandable at the skyscraper, the Central Liaison Office. Factional struggles in Beijing have spilled into Hong Kong, with the abrupt removal this winter of the long-serving director and deputy director at the liaison office, together with a rapid-fire series of transfers and retirements among other aides.

Turmoil at the liaison office has coincided with, and possibly fed, mounting frictions between Hong Kong and the mainland. Tens of thousands of people have joined large street demonstrations against the Beijing-backed government here, scuffles have broken out between Hong Kong residents and the many mainland visitors, and plans are under way for a large-scale civil disobedience campaign.