28
amended to include the provision that it can only intervene to apply
national laws related to defence and foreign affairs in an emergency
situation. I just wondered if you could share with us your assessment of
whether this limitation does in fact assuage really quite fundamental
worries that turmoil would be an excuse or reason for direct intervention
by the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong SAR?
(Mr Maude) I believe it does impose some constraints and some quite
rigorous constraints, but they are not absolute constraints.
Clearly I do
not think anyone has suggested that the People's Government in Peking
should be utterly deprived of the power to declare a state of emergency.
It is, I think, broadly accepted that that has to be and in those circum-
stances the task is to hedge that legal ability provided for in the Basic
Law with constraints which are as rigorous as possible. I think that the
constraints in the way that they are set out in Article 18 are some tough
ones.
44.
You believe now that the worries and concerns of a lot of
people, which we have reflected in our report, are no longer valid ones?
(Mr Maude) Let us just look at the exact wording in Article 18. It
refers to "a state of war", which is not the position you are referring to,
"by reason of turmoil within the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
which endangers national unity or security and is beyond the control of the
11
government of the Region. So it is not either/or; it has to be serious
turmoil to begin with and turmoil which is beyond the control of the SAR
government itself, which I think is a fairly rigorous constraint.
45. What about Article 19 and the jurisdiction of Hong Kong
courts? This was one where the draft failed initially to get the accepted
two-thirds majority of the Committee itself, as I understand it. Words
have been added to that, the description "such as defence and foreign
28