Yes … Beijing are working it from all angles
The SCMP reports
- Zhang Yong challenges what he calls enduring misconceptions surrounding the 1997 handover at the Basic Law 30th Anniversary Legal Summit
- Vice-chairman of the Basic Law Committee lays out the painstaking preparations made ahead of Hong Kong’s return to China
Legal experts have thrown light on China’s painstaking unpicking of Hong Kong’s colonial-era laws in the years before the 1997 handover to ensure they squared with the new constitutional order as sovereignty over the city returned to Beijing.
Zhang Yong, vice-chairman of the Basic Law Committee, said that dozens of Chinese lawyers spent five years examining every piece of Hong Kong legislation in an account he gave to a legal summit on Tuesday that attempted to debunk long-standing misconceptions surrounding the handover.
Zhang, who is on the committee advising Beijing on matters relating to the Basic Law , said those drafting the city’s mini-constitution decided that the “one country, two systems” governing principle at its centre would only be effective if those loyal to China ruled Hong Kong, and on the basis that the city would never be fully autonomous.
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He told the Basic Law 30th Anniversary Legal Summit that there existed a misguided belief in the city that the central government did not put a lot of effort into which pieces of legislation in force before the handover should be kept under the Basic Law.
