TNAG-2329-FCO40-3373-Hong-Kong-contacts-with-academics-and-writers-1991 — Page 83

government in order to comprehensively and seriously implement the Sino-British Joint Declaration and maintain the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong. We hope Hong Kong compatriots, an also positively contribute their efforts for this purpose.

48an

If one puts the two together, one has a PRC position which is fictionally drafted as follows:

"Britain and China should co-operate to implement China's wishes of

what the character of the territory should be under the Basic Law from 1st July, 1997."

But is this a fiction? I suspect and fear that it is not.

me to the words of a noted critic of the Hong Kong

This brings me

government :

(a) On the constitution of the legislature:

"Despite the Joint Declaration's promise that the Hong Kong legislature 'shall be constituted by elections, only one third of the 1997 legislature is to be democratically elected. The rest is to be 'elected' through 'functional constituencies' and an 'Election Committee.' Though China has not yet announced the details of appointment to the Election Committee, it is expected that the Committee will be under the influence if not control of Beijing. In 2007 seventeen years from now only one half of the legislature will be democratically elected, and there is no promise that there will ever be a majority of the legislature that is democratically elected .. One could well imagine what the response of Britain or the United States would have been had one of the Eastern European Communist governments promulgated a constitution in which seventeen years from now only half of the legislature would be democratically elected."

(b) On executive accountability to the legislature:

"The Joint Declaration provides that the executive authorities 'shall be accountable to the legislature.' Under the Basic Law, however:

1)

2)

The Chief Executive can unilaterally dissolve the legislature if it fails to pass an 'important' bill.

The Legislature has no power to pass a vote of no confidence in the Chief Executive. (Actually, it could do so, but it would be less than effective. See paragraph 4.23 below.)