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Peter Lee emphasised that having the future of Hong Kong set out in ar. international treaty was a very positive contrib
the process of preserving stability.
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Dr. K. L. Ding was very optimistic about the future of Hong Kong under the Agreement, and he pointed out that since the end of the Second World War, Hong Kong has benefitted from every international incident or development in the region - the communist victory in 1949, the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, the Cultural Revolution, the confrontation in Malaysia and Indonesia in the 1950s and the 1960s, and now the new 'open door' policy - all these had contributed to the development of Hong Kong. One of the strengths of the Agreement he argues is that none of the parties involved in it or affected by it, to achieve the objectives they most desire, has any option other than to enter into a compact broadly along the lines set out in the Agreement, though he acknowledged that his optimism was not shared by other members of the Christian Industrial Committee.
Dr. Ding said there is still a tendency to treat China as a criminal, to want to punish China for its past faults, and to deny the possibility of significant changes in basic Chinese attitudes. He, on the contrary, would assert that China is learning from experience, and that this process will be helped if other sovereign states choose to regard China as a responsible, dependable and important member of the community of nations.
He approved the intention to draft a Basic Law under which Hong Kong will be governed and administered as a Special Autonomous Region. Though the people of Hong Kong will not be directly represented in the drafting of the Basic Law, there will be a process of consultation, and this, after all, is the way Hong Kong has been governed during the last thirty years. Earlier experience, such as when the new Chinese Constitution was being drafted three years ago and the Hong Kong Christian Council made representations about this through the New China News Agency, indicated that the consultative process is taken seriously. The setting up of a Basic Law presupposes a commitment to the rule of law. Dr. Ding pointed out that the present Chinese leaders, out of their cwn personal experience of what happens when the rule of law is not upheld, are strongly motivated for getting the principle well established. They may well see the Hong Kong process as a means of furthering the same cause in China, and this is in line with the thinking of all those who affirm that Hong Kong has much to contribute to China socially and politically, as well as economically.
RESERVATIONS
These were voiced not by those who for essentially selfish reasons fear the resumption of Chinese sovereignty, but by people who were responding from firmly held convictions about the basic principles of an integrated society. They note, in passing, that the terms of the Agreement seem to be addressed primarily to the fears of business and commercial interests, and play down or ignore the concerns of other sections of the community. That, however, is not their major objection.
They insist that to foresee the probable outworkings of the Agreement, it is necessary to read its terms not through liberal, democratic, western eyes, but through Chinese, and Communist Chinese eyes.
For example, Annex I, entitled the "Elaboration by the Government of the Feople's Republic of China" states that the "the provisions of the international covenant on civil and political rights and the international covenant on economic social and cultural rights as applied to Hong Kong shall remain in force." However, it is claimed that the Chinese understanding of