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China mandarin flees

HK student protesters

HONG KONG: A senior Chinese official was rescued from angry student protesters and fled by taxi on Sunday after scuffles outside a Hong Kong hotel where China was holding political consultations on the colony's future.

Chen Ziying, deputy director of China's Hong Kong policy office, was mobbed and jostled by students as he left the meeting of the Preparatory Committee at the Grand Hyatt Hotel under the gaze of reporters and whirring of cameras.

"You turtle with your head in your shell," the protesters shouted after Chen, an insult accusing him and fellow mandarins of turning a deaf ear to real Hong Kong opinion.

Hotel security guards hustled Chen into a taxi for safety after 15 minutes of pandemonium outside the hotel in Hong Kong's waterfront district of Wanchai.

The skirmish came after a controversial start to China's high-profile consultations with grassroots organisations and dignitaries on how to form a new government when Hong Kong becomes a Special Administrative Region of China in mid-1997.

When proceedings began on Sunday, the second and last day of the event, the committee summoned hotel guards to eject two of the delegates - student leaders - who protested aloud against China's plan to abolish Hong Kong's elected legislature.

"Oppose the provisional legislature," they shouted.

Student leaders Ivy Chan and Sung Chee-tah were marched out of the meeting hall after removing their jackets to reveal T-shirts decorated with protest slogans and shouting, "if you don't want to be a rubber stamp, then leave now".

Chen Zuo'er, a senior Beijing official involved in negotiations with Britain on Hong Kong's handover, said the students' had shocked the conference delegates.

"We were sincere in inviting them here to express their views," Chen told reporters.

"But once the meeting started, they stood up saying we are not here to participate in the consultations and took off their jackets only to show a T-shirt with the slogan 'phoney consultations' and distributed leaflets," he said.

"We can't conduct a meeting like this. As a result we had to ask them to leave. We understand their position on opposing a provisional legislature, but they should also allow other delegates to express their views," Chen added.

Chan showed reporters bruises on her arm after being evicted from the meeting. China invited more than 100 organisations and individuals to the weekend talks, which are being presided over by Beijing's top bureaucrat on Hong Kong affairs, Lu Ping.-Reuter