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HK mandarins take charge

of post-97 destiny

HONG KONG: With Chinese rule just over a year away, Hong Kong for the first time has taken charge of negotiations on its future, although it could hurt the political prospects of the British colony's most senior civil servant.

China's animosity to Hong Kong's colonial governor Chris Patten has sidelined Britain in negotiations on the mid-1997 handover and forced Beijing to deal directly with the territory's senior civil servants.

Hong Kong's top civil servant Anson Chan returned from China late on Saturday after her first official talks with senior Beijing policymakers -- an effort by the two sides to quell growing anxieties in the colony as Chinese rule comes nearer.

Although Chan stood firm in opposing plans by China to dismantle the colony's democratically elected legislature and replace it with an appointed body, the talks were conciliatory.

But questions remained over whether Chan, Patten's deputy and the colony's most senior local official, might be damaging her own post-1997 political hopes.

Opinion polls suggest not. Chan has long been touted the most popular choice to be Hong Kong's first chief executive under Chinese rule.

Although not necessarily China's choice, Chan presided over the political reforms upon which Sino-British cooperation on the handover foundered.

But maintaining cordial relations with senior Chinese officials, she has become a crucial conduit between Beijing and a civil service increasingly jittery about the handover.

The South China Morning Post said on Sunday that the 55-year-old Chan, known as the "dragon lady" for her tough negotiating skills, now found herself in an impossible position.

Chan was being forced, the newspaper said, "to choose between her loyalty to Mr Patten and the demands of those who will be ruling Hong Kong next year" -- political opponents in years of bitter wrangling over the colony's future.

While Chan's talks in Beijing with Lu Ping, China's senior official presiding over the handover, had produced "a welcome air of progress", the paper commented, her treatment during the visit had at times been shabby.

In a country where protocol is a political gauge, the failure of Chan's mainland counterparts to see her off at the airport "bordered on discourteous", it said.

"Such an omission means far more in China than it might elsewhere, given the high level of attention accorded to protocol," the paper said in an editorial.-Reuter