HONG Kong still being a Crown colony, the administration is understandably upset over the intrusion into Hong Kong waters by a Chinese gun boat, which intercepted two locally registered boats suspected of smuggling cars and took them to Chinese waters with two local residents on board.
That Hong Kong should seriously guard the safety of its residents inside its territorial waters is beyond dispute. The Governor is said to have ordered that the Royal Navy, which was not informed of the intrusion off High Island by the marine police last week, must from now on be called in whenever an intrusion occurs.
But would the presence of the navy, had it been alerted, have helped scare off the intruders? It might, but there was also a good chance it wouldn't have.
For in a game of brinkmanship where neither side presumably wants to open fire or take any kind of drastic action, the likely outcome would be for the standoff to continue until it is halted by a higher command from either or both sides.
In last week's case, it was the Hong Kong marine police which exercised restraint on the orders of the Security Branch.
While it is easy to condemn the branch's handling of the incident as weak, one should guard against being overwhelmed by the emotive issue of showing the flag in laying the blame.
