TNAG-2329-FCO40-3373-Hong-Kong-contacts-with-academics-and-writers-1991 — Page 16

b)

c)

deal with an aspect of this more fully in paragraph 4.35 et seq. In this context, the RIPA project could play a very practical role, for I believe that lawyers, politicians and administrators in Beijing and Hong Kong will benefit from knowing how their opposite numbers exercise their functions, what concerns them most, how they use the law, what "canons of interpretation" they use, and so forth. And this is what part of the dialogue could be about. It could be of very practical use to people in both China and Hong Kong.

There are politically sensitive areas of Mainland PRC law which would be relevant to the discussion too, even though the laws in question do not apply to Hong Kong. Under the PRC Administrative Procedure Law which came into force on 1st October, 1990, for example, there are circumstances in which the Supreme People's Court is obliged to refer to the State Council (the highest 9 executive organ in the PRC) for an interpretation or ruling. Those circumstances include occasions where a PRC court finds inconsistencies between the regulations put out by local governments and the regulations put out by ministries or commissions acting under the State Council, of inconsistencies

16 between regulations of State Council bodies. In other words, another body of practical legal knowledge is going to begin to grow in the PRC from now onwards. I would like to hope that Hong Kong and U.K. expertise may be useful to PRC personnel in this regard; and I would like Hong Kong people, in particular, to get in early with the offers of assistance which can be given in the "professionalisation" of legal/political interpretation in the PRC. It is no bad thing to do so in areas where the benefit to the PRC involves matters unconnected with Hong Kong.

Also in the Administrative Procedure Law, there is a provision which says that:-

"If [certain] administrative [actions have] been undertaken

in one of the following circumstances, the act shall be annulled or partially annulled:

exceeding authority If an administrative sanction

or abuse of powers

is obviously unfair, it may be amended by judgment.

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Concepts such as "obviously unfair", "abuse of power" and so forth came recently to communist countries. They have a western ring to them, and we should not be averse to noting that. Such provisions are still light years, away from practice in the PRC, but are

nonetheless now law.

In order to construct a project which has genuine long-term value to all concerned, the practical significance of law at various historical stages in the PRC needs to be borne in mind. The political problem seems to have a number of ingredients. It includes an inability to