- City must adopt legal and enforcement mechanisms to ensure stability, liaison office director argues
- His appraisal comes on 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the Basic Law that sets out the ‘one country, two systems’ concept
Hong Kong has entered a "critical" point in its development that requires establishing "comprehensive legal and enforcement mechanisms" to safeguard national security, Beijing's top envoy in the city said as the Asian financial hub marks the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of its mini-constitution amid deep public mistrust of the government.
The director of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, Luo Huining, made the call in a review of the "one country, two systems" framework that guaranteed the city a high degree of autonomy after the British handover to China in 1997.
The concept was enshrined in the Basic Law, which also sets out Beijing's promise that Hong Kong's way of life will remain unchanged until at least 2047. The Chinese legislature, the National People's Congress, endorsed the mini-constitution 30 years ago, on April 4, 1990, after a five-year drafting process.
Taking stock of Hong Kong at the midway point, Luo said long-gestating problems had emerged. He pointed to the months of protests over a now-withdrawn extradition bill as an example, saying the unrest had seriously breached the bottom line of the "one country, two systems" framework. The authority of mainland China's constitution and the Basic Law had been challenged.
"It's (now) a critical moment to resolve the many deep-rooted problems," Luo said in an article published on the website of the liaison's office.
"Hong Kong's long-term stability can only be achieved by establishing comprehensive legal system and enforcement mechanisms to safeguard national security, strengthening the corresponding law enforcement power, and preventing external forces from intervening in Hong Kong affairs and carrying out activities of division, subversion, infiltration and sabotage."
Senior adviser to Beijing lashes out at 'insufficient' Hong Kong leadership
The government's attempt last year to introduce legislation that would have allowed suspects Beijing wanted to be transferred from Hong Kong into its custody was met with widespread public opposition. Hundreds of thousands of people joined marches to voice their disapproval of the proposed law, and as the administration stood firm, the demonstrations turned increasingly violent.
The apex came on July 1, when a crowd of protesters broke into the Legislative Council building and embarked on a spree of vandalism. According to Beijing, the unrest, which continued for months and partially paralysed the city, was the work of "black hands", or foreign government forces.
Luo's call was in line with prominent mainland scholars who spoke at an online seminar organised on Saturday by Tsinghua University's Centre for Hong Kong and Macau Research and Peking University's Centre for Hong Kong and Macau Studies.
Former Basic Law Committee member Rao Geping, a law professor at Peking University, said curbing violence should not be the solution to tame the political unrest. The crisis "stemmed from a school of thought that encouraged a deviation from the principle of 'one country, two systems' and was directed at the political system established under the Basic Law", Rao said.
The overriding priority was to strengthen Beijing's jurisdiction over Hong Kong to ensure national security, he said.
Former Hong Kong officials attributed the challenges of implementing the framework to a misinterpretation of the Basic Law. Among them was former Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying, who previously served as secretary general of the Basic Law Consultative Committee and is now vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the nation's top political advisory body.
Leung said Western politicians and local opposition members had distorted the high degree of autonomy Hong Kong enjoyed by arguing it should be complete autonomy.
"Some opposition (figures) in Hong Kong moved the goalposts by claiming that the selection of the chief executive did not need approval by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress but just a report to the committee for record," Leung said. "They have been constantly performing a decentralisation from Beijing and encroaching on the rights granted to the central government by the Basic Law."
Separately, former secretary for justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie, who previously served as vice-chairwoman of the Basic Law Committee, told a radio programme that major controversies over the mini-constitution over the past 30 years stemmed partly from some people not accepting the reality of the city's handover to Beijing. They "deliberately misinterpreted the meaning of some provisions in order to mislead the public, damage the system and hinder the implementation of the Basic Law", she said.
To ensure "a smooth execution of 'one country, two systems', or even extending it beyond 2047, people should abandon dissent, hatred and hostility".
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