(Clearwisdom.net)

Asia Time reported on December 5 that an influential group in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office is calling on US President George W Bush to review Hong Kong's special status if the territory approves proposed national security laws.

The group, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), has advocated a policy of confrontation with Beijing since it was created in 1997 [...]

Removal of Hong Kong's status under the 1992 US-Hong Kong Policy Act, a law that gives the former British colony preferential treatment separate from the mainland on key matters, including export controls and other trade and political issues, would be devastating to its future, according to China specialists here.

Even a formal review to determine whether Hong Kong remains sufficiently autonomous to warrant its special status under US law risks a huge loss of confidence. "This is designed to put pressure on the Hong Kong government," said Alan Romberg, a retired State Department expert currently with the Henry L Stimson Center.

"It represents the Hong Kong government's worst scenario," said Mike Jendrzejczyk, veteran China-watcher at Human Rights Watch.

The group's recommendation to Bush is laid out in a letter that was posted on its website on November 25 and is signed by 42 other mostly well-known figures, in addition to Kristol and Kagan. It was co-sponsored by the US Committee on Hong Kong headed by former US attorney general Dick Thornburgh, who also signed it. (Click here: http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter-112602.htm for the full text of the letter.)

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Charter members of PNAC include top officials in the Bush administration, including Cheney and his top national-security aide, I Lewis Libby; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his top civilian appointees, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith; and assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs Peter Rodman.

Other prominent PNAC alumni in the administration include top National Security Council staff, such as Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad; and Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton. The president's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and the head of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, whose office is based at AEI, are also active in the group.

While a strong majority of signers of the Hong Kong letter are neo-conservative or more traditional Republicans like Cheney and Rumsfeld, PNAC also recruited a number of individuals considered at the center or left of the political spectrum to sign the letter.

Among them were Robert Edgar, the head of the National Council of Churches of Christ; former Democratic congressman Sam Gejdensen, the Clinton administration's top human-rights official; Yale international-law Professor Harold Hongju Koh, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor; HRW founder Robert L Bernstein; former Democratic senator Paul Simon; the head of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) labor-union confederation, John Sweeney; and Harvard China expert Merle Goldman.

The national-security legislation to which the PNAC letter objects refers to the "Proposals to Implement Article 23 of the Basic Law" released by the Hong Kong government on September 25. After three months of public discussion and consultation, the proposals are supposed to be finalized for formal submission to the Legislative Council (Legco). The Basic Law is Hong Kong's mini-constitution.

The proposed legislation for Article 23, which was put off for five years precisely because of its political sensitivity, is supposed to cover crimes of treason, secession, sedition and subversion against the central government in Beijing which treats it as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) under the "one country, two systems" formula agreed on by Britain and China.

As submitted in September, the proposals have been assailed by human-rights groups, labor unions, and democracy activists who have argued that they go too far in restricting fundamental freedoms and in surrendering control over key areas to Beijing.

Among the provisions that have provoked the most concern are those that provide police with broad new search powers, prohibit groups in Hong Kong from supporting organizations proscribed under Chinese law for "endangering state security", and criminalize as state secrets (with a five-year prison term) the exposure of information on relations between China and Hong Kong.

The document also defines treason or attempts to overthrow mainland China's system of government not only in terms of acts of violence but also of "other serious unlawful means" and applies it to foreigners for their acts while in Hong Kong, according to Jendrzejczyk.

While some safeguards against abuse of these provisions are built into to the proposals, HRW and other human-rights groups note Beijing's previous interference with Hong Kong's judicial system and suggest that the same could happen under Article 23. Britain and the United States have also expressed concerns about the proposals, and Bush himself was reported to have raised some of them in his October 25 meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

While acknowledging that the Hong Kong government has taken to heart some of these concerns in part by crafting language to ensure that international human-rights standards will remain in force, the State Department said on November 21 that a number of specific provisions should be clarified or reviewed. It specified the lack of appropriate oversight in the exercise of emergency powers; uncertainty about the parameters of "unlawful disclosure" of state secrets; new restrictions on foreign political organizations in Hong Kong; and the proposed extension of subversion-related offenses to permanent residents, whether inside or outside Hong Kong without regard to their nationality.

"We believe there should be an opportunity for the fullest possible consultation on the draft legislation; effective consultation and public confidence requires the early release of the actual language for public deliberation," the State Department said.

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The PNAC letter, however, suggests that just about any laws in Hong Kong regarding treason, subversion and sedition against Beijing would represent an unacceptable threat to Hong Kong's freedoms and autonomy.

"This danger exists even if these laws are narrowly drawn because of the broader political context in which they will operate," the letter states in apparent opposition to Chan's views. "Hong Kong's legislature is not fully democratic, its chief executive is chosen by Beijing, and the independence of its courts is limited.

"In brief, these new laws will be enforced in an environment in which the appropriate political and legal checks and balances do not exist, and under the influence of a regime with a record of using national security laws to punish advocates of political and religious freedom," the letter states.

The letter then turns to the US-Hong Kong Policy Act under which the president is "empowered to determine whether Hong Kong is sufficient autonomous to merit ... privileged treatment".

"With the enactment of the proposed national-security laws, it would be impossible to credibly maintain that Hong Kong enjoys the high degree of autonomy and the rights and freedoms it was promised on its reversion to China," the letter states, adding that Washington should "make clear that the adoption of restrictive laws would trigger a review of Hong Kong's special status under the US-Hong Kong Policy Act".

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/DL05Ad03.html