Roundtable discussion.

• Position: Symposium: Hong Kong's Reintegration into the People's Republic of China - Panel Discussion

Ms. Laurelyn Douglas:(*****) I want to welcome back our distinguished panelists and welcome you to the roundtable, which we hope will be an informal opportunity to ask questions and review some of the issues presented during the sessions yesterday. I also encourage students who might be participating in research on this topic to speak up.

Professor Harold G. Maier: This is going to be informal, and that's the best thing about sessions like this. I'll help us get started, but I expect the discussion will soon carry itself.

Those of you who were here for yesterday's sessions may recall that I suggested what we are discussing is something that is almost purely speculative during this symposium. We certainly know something of the history of the past. But even that, I think, is not as well understood, at least in the United States and, perhaps in the Western Hemisphere in general, as it could be.

But what we are trying to do in this meeting is to predict what Hong Kong is going to become. One thing of which we can be fairly confident is that we can't know now what Hong Kong will become.

Yet speculating is often worthwhile, and so this morning I've asked Peter [Wesley-Smith]--and I gave him two minutes' warning--to continue what he had done at the outset of yesterday's sessions. You'll remember that he described a history of the relationship among Hong Kong, various treaties, and what is now the People's Republic of China (hereinafter P.R.C.).

I've asked Peter if he would be willing to begin today's session by giving a projection of what he sees as the future of Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China for the next twenty to twenty-five years. I expect the other panelists will get started from that, and then we'll get audience members involved as well.

Professor Peter Wesley-Smith: I think the first thing to say is that a historian should never try to predict the future.

I think the usual assumption by most people is that Hong Kong in terms of internal politics and domestic legal affairs will become very much like Singapore. For those who know Singapore, this might be a rather distressing prognostication. Singapore, of course, is in some sense formally a democratic system, but in practice is not democratic at all. It has a very tough government and is a "rugged society," where the leaders of the People's Action Party suppress dissent in a very repressive manner and use the legal system to achieve such ends.

And I think the Chinese government has been very impressed with the Singapore model. They were very impressed with the Hong Kong colonial model. And, indeed, when they started off talking and thinking about the future of Hong Kong, what they initially intended to do was to simply cross out the "United Kingdom" where it appeared and replace it with the "People's Republic of China." The appeal of the Hong Kong model to the P.R.C. is that Hong Kong had a system which guaranteed imperial authority, with virtually no democratic institutions at all, or any limitation upon the autocratic executive power of the Hong Kong government.

But that wasn't possible as it turned out. The Basic Law is a much more liberal document. But I think the P.R.C. is intending that the Basic Law be administered as far as possible in an autocratic fashion so that Hong Kong will continue to be a hot-bed of inequities and perform its role in business and international trade, not only for its internal benefit but for the benefit of China. But Hong Kong won't in any sense become genuinely democratic. There will be some slight democratization as time goes on, but very, very little, with much the same kind of attitude towards human rights.

The one point which I didn't think was made adequately yesterday was that at least there is the institutional protection in Hong Kong of an independent judiciary. The great test will be whether that judiciary can make the Basic Law work as a document which tends to restrict the authority of governments. In Singapore, I don't think that's so: there isn't a history or appearance of judicial autonomy. I believe even to mention the words "compliant judiciary" is to cause a great problem. But I think in Hong Kong it will be quite some time, if ever, before the judiciary becomes completely compliant.

The only major difference, I think, between the Hong Kong and Singapore models is that Singapore does not have the People's Republic next door. So the difference will be that there is some uneasy relationship between Hong Kong and the P.R.C. The P.R.C. obviously intends to exercise a considerable role, despite the purpose of the Basic Law being to provide something like a "Chinese wall" in a sense between Hong Kong and the Central People's Government. But I don't think any realist in Hong Kong expects that those kinds of constitutional guarantees will, in fact, work very successfully in practice.

Just one example: the Chief Executive designate, Mr. Tung Chee-hwa, was apparently chosen by a selection committee, which was composed of Hong Kong residents. In effect, though, he was chosen by the Chinese side. Although there was an election and there were a dozen candidates, four of whom were taken seriously, it nonetheless became very clear that China had chosen Mr. Tung Chee-hwa. They had chosen him probably fifteen years ago when they provided something like a hundred million U.S. dollars to rescue his shipping company. He was very much Peking's man, and so he was duly selected.

Tung Chee-hwa is quite an impressive man in many respects. He was a member of Governor Patten's Executive Council, so he has links with the current system. The present question is, to what degree is he going to be independent of the P.R.C. and to what degree is he going to promote the idea of a high degree of autonomy? One particularly important area where this issue is raised is in regard to the appointment of the Chief Justice for the Special Administrative Region.

Currently, there are two candidates--not quite the word one would think of for a top post like that, at least, not in the British system, although maybe it's appropriate here, where there are elections for judges--for Chief Justice. One of them has the respect of the entire legal profession and is very highly regarded generally, and who everyone thinks would be an excellent Chief Justice, and he's likely to have the integrity and courage that are perhaps needed in the judiciary in this transitional period.

The other candidate is a sitting member of the Court of Appeal. He's very British in demeanor and manner. He's married to a non-Chinese woman. He is Chinese, as is the other candidate. But this second candidate has always been seen as very British and very different from his sister, Liu Yu-chu, who is a total-well, she's an unguided missile, according to the Chinese. But she's traditionally been a thorn in the side of the colonial administration. Not unintelligent, but very unpredictable, and seen as very left wing. She's a member of the National People's Congress. [Ms. Liu has since died.] And her brother Benjamin Liu has been seen as a contrast, the British side of the family. And yet, now he is openly campaigning to be Chief Justice, and apparently elements of the Chinese government want him to be appointed. They don't trust the other candidate, because he is seen as too independent.

Andrew Li, the other candidate, was on the Executive Council with Tung Chee-hwa. They are close friends. Apparently Tung Chee-hwa has great respect for him and wants to appoint him. But the appointment has not yet been made, although one would have expected it to have been made by now. And the inside information, the accuracy of which I can't guarantee, is that there's a real battle going on. And that if Andrew Li is appointed Chief Justice, then that would be some indication that Tung Chee-hwa is prepared to stand up to the Chinese side, and the Chinese side is prepared to give in or at least to be flexible about this issue.

And if Li were to be Chief Justice, then I think that would greatly strengthen the hopes that the judiciary, at least in the first ten years, will be impartial and full of integrity, and will provide, I think, honest interpretations of the Basic Law and the laws to ensure a high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong. [Mr. Andrew Li was subsequently appointed Chief Justice of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.]

I'll just finish in regards to predictions of a statement by Ducey and Pious on Tommy Goth: "Prediction is always extremely difficult, particularly in regards to the future."

Professor Maier: Does anyone have any comments?

Professor John M. Rogers: Let me mention in more detail the dispute over the Provisional Legislature. The Joint Declaration of 1984 called for the creation of at least a partially elected legislature. And some of the details were spelled out in the Basic Law, when it was finally adopted in 1990. That Basic Law calls for a sixty member Legislative Council, twenty of whom are elected from single member constituencies in the fashion of elections with which we are most familiar in the United States. Thirty of the sixty are elected from what are called functional-constituency elections, and the remaining ten of them are elected by an electoral commission.

That was the model that was followed for the 1995 elections, which the Chinese found so objectionable. Now, the Chinese can certainly object that they--rather than the British Electoral Commission--should have the electoral commission that appoints the ten: that objection is easy to see. The Chinese could object that the functional constituencies were divided improperly, and I believe they have objected to that. As for functional constituencies, they theoretically give members of various professions or groups in the Hong Kong workforce a voice in the legislature. For example, the legal profession gets to elect or choose a member of the Legislative Council. Similarly, various other professional...