Two disturbing events on the legal front should make Hong Kong people wonder how sincere Beijing is in upholding Hong Kong's rule of law and living up to its promise of 'one country, two systems'.
Despite concern in the community about the legal protection for human rights and individual liberties, the Preparatory Committee legal sub-group has decided that 16 of Hong Kong's laws should be repealed and another nine, including the Bill of Rights, should be modified.
And a few days before the legal sub-group meeting, it was revealed that China Legal Services (Hong Kong) Limited, an arm of the Chinese Ministry of Justice, had refused to comply with the Legal Practitioners Ordinance which requires all foreign lawyers and law firms to register with the Hong Kong Law Society.
Superficially, the two events are not connected, but if we look at the rationale behind the decisions, something in common can be detected. In both cases, political considerations seem to have taken precedence over legal concerns.
The sub-group said existing clauses in the Bill of Rights were inconsistent with the Basic Law so they had to be removed from the statute book.
For many people, in particular the legal profession, this cannot be the real reason if the legal sub-group has studied the provisions from a legal point of view. Ever since these so-called problematic laws were enacted, Hong Kong has been doing fine without falling into legal chaos. The ordinances have not been challenged in court for being inconsistent with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which the Basic Law says has to be implemented locally through laws of the Special Administrative Region.
So on what basis did the legal sub-group think that the existing laws were against the Basic Law? It is only natural that Hong Kong people will ask whether such a retrogressive step is more likely a result of politics, because restricting civil liberties is more important to Beijing than the stability of the local legal system.