Qian offers boost for civil service

CHINA gave a strong reassurance to Hong Kong's jittery civil service yesterday.

In an effort to ease employment fears, Vice-Premier Qian Qichen said: 'We hope that all serving civil servants of the Hong Kong Government can stay beyond 1997 and continue to serve the people of Hong Kong and the Special Administrative Region [SAR].' He spent a third of his closing address to the Preliminary Working Committee (PWC) plenum stressing that keeping the 180,000-strong civil service stable was of paramount importance.

Mr Qian, the PWC chairman, said China would use every opportunity to propagate its policy towards civil servants so that the message would 'penetrate the hearts and minds of the people'.

'The Chinese Government will not send a single mandarin and staff,' he said.

His statements follow similar soothing messages from senior Chinese officials Lu Ping and Zhou Nan over the past two months.

Mr Lu, Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said during a visit to the territory in May that the civil service was a great asset for the future SAR.

Mr Zhou, director of the local branch of Xinhua (the New China News Agency), gave an unprecedented address to a group of senior government officials early this month in which he said Beijing would not be 'settling old scores' after the handover.