Beijing wants to engage Hong Kong’s legal community more when interpreting Basic Law, says Wang Zhenmin
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Beijing is studying ways to further engage Hong Kong’s legal community when it has to interpret the Basic Law in the future, the liaison office’s legal chief said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Wang Zhenmin said this was part of Beijing’s plan to “fully implement” the Basic Law.
“People [have complained] a lot in recent years that the Basic Law was not fully implemented, both in Hong Kong and [the] mainland,” he said.
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“So we are doing research on this question [on] how to, for example, increase participation of the Hong Kong legal community when the National People’s Congress Standing Committee interprets the Basic Law.”
Under Hong Kong’s constitutional framework, when the Court of Final Appeal deems it necessary to refer a case to the NPCSC for an interpretation of the Basic Law, the NPCSC would do so upon the advice of the Basic Law Committee, of which Wang is a member.
The committee consists of 12 members, equally split between Hongkongers and mainlanders.
In the first few years after the handover, however, Beijing interpreted the law without a request from the top court, effectively overturning its right-of-abode judgment and triggering concerns over judicial independence in the then-fledging SAR.