09/04 190 16:28
☎ 07695 3457
Prospects: After 1997, disputes between Beijing and its SAR are inevitable: only their scale and seriousness is in The handling of the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 indicates at the least that China's political institutions do not provide the means of resolving conflicts regarded as threatening to the mainland's socialist system, and that a serious dispute can result in the mobilisation of the Chinese army, and the use by its personnel of considerable violence against unarmed civilians. From 1997, the PLA will be stationed in HK. This provides part of the context within which the fears of people in Hongkong need to be addressed. But it means, equally, that in approaching relevant issues, there is a need to examine if there exist ways of taspiring confidence into relevant relationships, as well as taking care always to note those which could undermine it further.
5. Accordingly, I wonder whether you think that if people concerned about the future of Hongkong concentrate all their energy on the absence of legal guarantees for autonomy, and the defective level of justiciability of crucially important areas of PRC action, vital as these are, they will miss the opportunity of seeing whether it is possible to mould a shared understanding between now and 1997 between officials in China and Hongkong as to lal the methods by which each of them set administrative priorities for their respective territories, and [b] the approach each of them would like to employ given the need for a stable resolution of such conflicts as will occur in areas where their joint or sole writ will run? (I should add that I have not yet seen the BL in its final form. )
6. Implications for Training:
China and Hongkong have wholly differing legal and administrative systems. In China, no legal remedies exist against the state for actions in which it may engage. The governance of Hongkong, however, has proceeded on the British assumption that the manner of the combination of institutions and legal safeguards with certain administrative attitudes and constitutional conventions provides the sine qua non for effective and proper administration. From here flow the ideas which underlie the prevailing notions of administrative practice, the concepts relevant to the relationship between management and development, and the practice and training of personnel who operate within the system of government. China has no practical experience of these at all.
7. Before travelling, I need therefore to do at least the following:
2