of other provisions concerning the onal flag, emblem and capital, and certain powers of the NPC and State Council. The Chinese members no doubt take a broader view of the article ich might be applied in Hong Kong.
To avoid future disputes, the BLDC has agreed that some clarification must be provided, but while some members insisted that all applicable articles should be exhaustively listed by number, others consider that it would be sufficient just to specify which 'type' of provisions will not apply to Hong Kong, thus permitting a more flexible approach to the rest.
This 'clarification' is not going to be included in the Basic Law, as some Hong Kong members had hoped, but will be issued separately by the Standing Committee of the NPC in the exercise of its powers to interpret Article 31. It will take the form of an advisory resolution of the Standing Committee, not a constitutional amendment, for which the procedures would be more cumbersome and require a two-thirds majority vote in the NPC. An interpretive resolution can be passed by ordinary majority in the Standing Committee.
This is in accordance with one of the options put forward by the BLCC, though some members had reservations about it. It was pointed out that if the relationship between the Constitution and the Basic Law is determined by this simpler procedure, it could more easily be changed in the future.
SAR legislature. There was no mention of national legislation, which led a number of Hong Kong BLCC members to believe that it would not be applied.
In legal usage, however, there is a difference between the laws of Hong Kong and the laws in Hong Kong. Those laws listed in the Joint Declaration may be the only laws of (ie originating from within) Hong Kong, but it does not necessarily follow that they are the only laws in (ie applicable in) Hong Kong. This may seem semantic nicety, but the actual wording of the Joint Declaration does deceptively (and no doubt deliberately) leave open the question whether the NPC can legislate for Hong Kong.
The majority of the BLDC notably members from China have taken it for granted that laws of the NPC, existing or future, on any subject, can be applied to Hong Kong. Accordingly, the draft Basic Law contains two options which vary only in the required procedures. In either case, the power to decide to extend legislation to Hong Kong rests with the NPC, or with its Standing Committee, and the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR can only request permission to vary or expend it.
According to the first proposal, the NPC or Standing Committee legislates directly, whereas according to the second it would do so by ordering the Chief Executive of Hong Kong to
publish it or to secure its enactment by the SAR legislature. If s/he failed to do so, the NPC may promulgate the law for application to Hong Kong.
A minority of members of the BLDC considered that the NPC should not legislate for Hong Kong in areas other than foreign affairs and defence. Some Hong Kong members of the BLCC, such as Eric Au (a solicitor) even believe that no laws of the NPC should apply to Hong Kong, unless specified in the Basic Law, and that even on defence and foreign affairs laws should only be passed by the Hong Kong legislature.
The latter view is rather unrealistic, since Beijing is responsible for defence and foreign affairs and is bound to want to retain powers of legislation in the event that the SAR legislature refuses to co-operate.
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In all other areas, however, Hong Kong is to be self-governing under the terms of the Sino-British Agreement, and it is much harder to see why the NPC has a legitimate requirement to retain such powers. Why would the NPC wish or need to force on Hong Kong legislation concerning, example, education, banking, ог freedom of the press? It will already have the negative power to annul local legislation issuing from the Hong Kong SAR legislature which it deems to be contrary to the Basic Law. People in Hong Kong are bound to wonder Why is this not enough?■
The only reassurance one can offer VIETNAMESE REFUGEES
to those with this fear is that, until now, the Standing Committee has exercised power to interpret the Constitution very rarely.
its
Will National Laws be applied in Hong Kong?
Could the Hong Kong SAR courts be obliged to apply laws passed by the NPC without regard to the wishes of the local legislature? Might Hong Kong people find themselves bound, for example, by the Military Conscription Law, if Beijing decided that circumstances required its extension to Hong Kong?
It has been stated in the draft Basic law (Chapter 2, Article 7) that the SAR shall be vested with legislative power to pass any laws in accordance with the Basic Law. But does this mean exclusive legislative power for Hong Kong?
The Joint Declaration provided that the laws of the SAR shall be the Basic law, the laws previously in force in Hong Kong (with a few exceptions), and laws enacted by the Hong Kong
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The position of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong continues to remain as insecure as ever bounced between powers competing to get rid of them. In May the British Government announced it would allow more Vietnamese to settle in Britain, but the gift is carefully surrounded with barbed wire.
Hurd's New Offer
Speaking in Parliament on May 8th, Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, declared that "This Government have an excellent record of participation in international efforts to relieve the outflow of Vietnamese to Hong Kong and elsewhere in south-east Asia. Between 1979 and 1981 we accepted for settlement here, following the initial surge of departures from Vietnam, nearly 20,000 Indo-chinese refugees of whom over 12,000 were Vietnamese from Hong Kong.' The Home Secretary went on to laud the government's record for accepting, in 1985, another 500 Vietnamese who
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were related to those already settled in Britain.
His announcement was made after months of lobbying from refugee organisations in the United Kingdom, and increasingly vociferous protest from Hong Kong's Legislative Council, some members of which have been calling for refugees to be repatriated to Vietnam.
A Mouse
Mr Hurd's loud prelude gave birth to a mouse: he revealed that the British Government is to permit a further 468 refugees to settle in the UK. Even then, the package was very carefully tied up. Each of the people concerned is identified by name and closely related to someone already settled in Britain: no hope here for the marginal, the orphans, the unattached.
Still more to the point, this small inflow too small to justify the expense of taking on reception staff in the refugee agencies is to be spread thinly over two years: no bulge is to be
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