NYTimes.com Article: Beijing Sends Team to Assess Hong Kong's Unrest

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Unrest in Hong Kong.

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Beijing Sends Team to Assess Hong Kong's Unrest

July 11, 2003
 By KEITH BRADSHER 




 

HONG KONG, July 10 - Beijing has sent a team of officials
here from security and intelligence agencies, the foreign
ministry and the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office,
pro-Beijing politicians said today. The delegation appears
to be the mainland's first attempt to respond to the mass
protests and pro-democracy fervor of recent days. 

A march by 500,000 on July 1, followed by the indefinite
postponement early Monday of a strict internal security
bill, apparently surprised Chinese officials and
intelligence services. 

Ma Lik, the secretary general of the Democratic Alliance
for the Betterment of Hong Kong, the most pro-Beijing of
the five main political parties here, said that 10 to 20
officials had arrived. 

"They have to assess the effect of the July 1st march," he
said. "I think it's a shock to the central government. They
are collecting suggestions first, and then there will be
meetings in Beijing. I think these people will leave in a
couple of days, and they will write their reports." 

Shiu Sin-por, the executive director of One Country Two
Systems Research Institute, which has close ties to
Beijing, predicted that Beijing would discourage Tung
Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, from resigning. 

Instead Beijing is likely to offer more economic and
political support to Mr. Tung, Mr. Shiu said. "Definitely
they are going to take action to try to remedy the
situation," he said. 

The Hong Kong Security Bureau and the Chinese government's
liaison office here declined to comment on the visiting
officials, whose arrival was reported today by several of
Hong Kong's 14 local newspapers. 

Six years after Britain handed over Hong Kong to China, the
former British colony retains considerable autonomy as a
special administrative region of China with a separate
economic, legal and political system. Chinese officials are
not supposed to intervene in Hong Kong's internal affairs,
although Beijing is frequently consulted. 

Hours before the rally on July 1, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao
of China completed a much publicized visit here intended to
highlight increasingly close relations, including a
free-trade agreement, between Hong Kong and the rest of
China. 

Beijing publicly endorsed a plan by Mr. Tung, announced
days after the rally, to rush the security bill through the
legislature and was embarrassed when Mr. Tung's main
legislative ally, James Tien, quit the cabinet, leaving Mr.
Tung without the votes to pass the legislation. 

Mr. Tien, the chairman of the pro-business and usually
pro-government Liberal Party, said at a news conference for
foreign correspondents on Wednesday that he was certain his
decision had angered the central government. "Beijing is so
mad at me, I won't even dare go to Beijing right now," he
said. 

A pro-democracy rally on Wednesday night attracted as many
as 50,000 demonstrators in a sign of what may be the
politicization of what used to be a fairly apolitical city
preoccupied with commerce. 

At the start of the July 1 rally, a balcony running the
length of a nearby skyscraper was lined with men in uniform
along with a half dozen cup-shaped devices that appeared to
be eavesdropping equipment for listening to conversations
in the crowd below. The gear mostly appeared to be pointed
at a prayer vigil held by Bishop Joseph Zen of the Roman
Catholic Church, an outspoken advocate of civil liberties
here. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/11/international/asia/11HONG.html?ex=1059243815&ei=1&en=dc6ea0816347f88b


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