Hong Kong Drops Unpopular Internal-Security Bill

The NY Times ^ | September 5, 2003 | KEITH BRADSHER

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Yielding to public pressure to an extent seldom seen in China, Hong Kong's chief executive announced today that he was withdrawing internal-security legislation that had provoked huge protests in July.

Tung Chee-hwa, the chief executive, said that while he still believed that legislation was needed here to protect China's national security, he would not introduce a new bill until a clear public consensus supported the legislation. He canceled today the government's plans to issue by the end of this month a "consultation document" seeking the public's views on which provisions should be included in any security legislation.

Lawmakers said that the withdrawal of the bill made it unlikely that any security bill could be enacted before next summer's Legislative Council elections. Pro-government parties have feared that their support for the security bill could cost them seats in those elections if the bill remains controversial until then.

The main pro-Beijing party here, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, had called for Mr. Tung on Aug. 21 to postpone the security bill until after those elections, and it welcomed Mr. Tung's open-ended postponement today. "With this move, I think the people in Hong Kong will concentrate more on the economy, and it will make the election not that politicized," said Ma Lik, the secretary general of the D.A.B., as the party is known.

Democracy advocates here were pleased by Mr. Tung's decision but suspicious of his long-term plans. Mr. Tung had tried over the past year to push the legislation through using a "fast-track" process that limited opportunities for amendments. Asked repeatedly during a news conference today whether he would use the same process if the legislation were reintroduced later, Mr. Tung declined to answer.

Yeung Sum, the chairman of the Democratic Party, the main opposition party here, said that the government might try to secure the re-election of a pro-government majority in the Legislative Council next summer, and then quickly push the legislation through when the next session of the legislature starts on Oct. 1.

"I worry it is only a delaying tactic," he said.

Until mid-August, state-controlled newspapers in China were still calling for passage of the security bill as soon as possible. But Chinese intelligence and security agencies had sent representatives here in late July and early August to interview community leaders, and the tone of remarks from Chinese officials began to change, quickly followed by changes in the official media.

The only official reaction today from Beijing to Mr. Tung's announcement was a terse report by the New China News Agency.

Mr. Tung said that he still thought the legislation should pass someday, but refused during his news conference even to say whether he thought it should pass before his current, five-year term expires in the summer of 2007. "Hong Kong really has this obligation, this constitutional obligation," he said. "Being a Chinese national, a citizen, I do believe we should legislate."

The bill would replace colonial regulations against sedition, subversion, secession and treason left over from before the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. The government's bill was somewhat more lenient in certain provisions than the colonial ordinances, but some of those ordinances date to the 1950s and earlier and may be unenforceable in Hong Kong's common-law courts.

Beijing has made a series of economic concessions to Hong Kong this summer in an attempt to allay public anger, including some concessions that have angered officials in other Chinese cities, notably Shanghai. Today's decision eases the pressure on Beijing to offer yet more concessions to Hong Kong in order to buy support for the security legislation.

Beijing and Hong Kong concluded a free-trade agreement on June 29, partly in an unsuccessful bid to discourage attendance at an anti-government march on July 1. But the march still attracted as many as 500,000 people.

Since then, Beijing has relaxed some of its remaining restrictions on visits here by mainland citizens. This has produced a flood of tourism that is lifting retail sales and even starting to revive the moribund property market, as affluent mainlanders seek a safe place to invest their money.

Beijing and Hong Kong also agreed last month that Hong Kong would be the first city where offshore banking would be allowed for China's currency, known as the yuan or renminbi, despite China's controls on the movement of large sums of money in or out of the mainland. Chinese experts with close ties to the government said then that a deal could be reached by the end of the year.

But that arrangement provoked public protests by municipal officials in Shanghai, which has a lot of influence because it is the hometown of many top Communist officials, and which hopes to turn itself into a financial center to rival Hong Kong someday. Mr. Tung said today that while Hong Kong would still be the first city to have offshore banking in China's currency, "the time is not ripe yet" for offshore banking anywhere.

The official media in China has recently shifted to criticisms of Emily Lau, the convener of the Frontier Council, a left-leaning party that favors greater democracy. Ms. Lau attended a conference in Taiwan last month sponsored by advocates of a Taiwanese declaration of independence from mainland China. In the latest of several vandalism incidents, the front door of her district office for constituents was smeared with feces on Wednesday night.

Ms. Lau said today that she believed Mr. Tung was postponing the bill only because of the D.A.B.'s election worries. "It's not so much Tung following the wishes of the people as being forced by the political realities," she said.

[Flashman_at_the_charge]

Good news.

[The Electrician]

With Democrats and Communists alike, they will keep coming back time and again, and eventually will find a way to slip this in and destroy the freedoms that people in Hong Kong grew accustomed to having.