}
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member resident in Hong Kong. 18 or so Hong Kong residents were made members of the 5th National Committee of the CF1CC,
and 16 were chosen as delegates to the 5th NFC. Also in Faren,
a new Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs was created under the
directorship of Liao Chengzhi (Liao Ch'eng-chih) and
responsible to the State Council. A Commission for Overseas
Chinese Affairs had existed before the Cultural Revolution and
Liao Chengzhi had been its Vice-Chairman and later Chairman
since 1949.
47 Evidence of Chinese interest in maintaining a high level of representation in Hong Kong through the offices of New China News Agency (NCNA) was shown in the choice of its new Director,
Wang Kuang, in July 1978. Wang is the most senior Chinese
official to have filled this post. A Party member of long-standing, rehabilitata
in 1977 after dismissal from office during the Cultural Revolution, Wang held
a rank roughly equivalent to that of Vice-Minister in his previous post as
head of the State Publications Administrative Bureau under the
State Council. In an article entitled "On Wang Kuang's Coming South and Hong Kong's Frospects", published in Zheng Ming
No. 10 August 1978, Yu Yizhi speculated that the appointment of
a man of Wang's standing meant that:
"First, the Chinese attach tremendous importance to Hong Kong and Macao; second, they are vigorously developing
their work in many respects in these two places; and thiza
the recovery of Hong Kong is far from being placed on their agenda".
48 NCNA was the source for another confidence-inspiring exercise on the future of Hong Kong. On 5 September, the long Kong newspaper Mingbao (Hing Pao) carried a "special report", entitled "Opposing Britain and Resisting Atrocity' was Wrong", which gave an account of a speech delivered on 30 August by Ji Feng Chi
Feng) a Deputy Director of the Hong Kong branch of HCNA. The article quoted Ji as saying that the campaign of violence in Hong Kong in 1967 was the result of erroneous decisions made in Peking, and that the movement was exploited by the Lin Bias (in Piao) clique. Although he laid the blame for Peking's errors at the door of the lin Biao faction, Ji said that the CCP leadership as a whole should bear responsibility for the mistakes made. He pointed out that the liong Kong Government and made efforts to settle the grievances of 1967 through negotiation and consultation, but that these efforts hid Leen
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