Inside track
THERE ARE SOME who would probably like nothing better than to see the Falun Gong banned in Hong Kong. And not just Beijing-friendly acolytes either, but also those sceptics who always seem to want to believe the worst about the SAR.
After all, the continuing - albeit increasingly threadbare - tolerance of the sect's activities in Hong Kong is a constant reminder of just how badly they got it wrong, with their often apocalyptic predictions of what would happen after the 1997 handover. And of the very large extent to which Beijing has, with a few important exceptions, so far kept its promises over 'one country, two systems'.
That might sound a strange thing to say when police have imposed such tight curbs on the Falun Gong followers who plan to protest during President Jiang Zemin's opening address to the Fortune Global Forum on Tuesday. And when Tung Chee-hwa has been directing such increasingly strong rhetoric at the sect.
But the police restrictions do not only affect the sect. Rather, they seem to be part of a general clampdown on all protesters, although none the more palatable for that. And Mr Tung's rhetoric is precisely that - simply words rather than solid action against the Falun Gong.
It remains quite possible the situation could swiftly change. After all, never underestimate Mr Tung's readiness to do something stupid: in this case, by revoking the Falun Gong's registration under the Societies Ordinance.
But so far, Mr Tung has resisted the temptation to do so, even at the risk of antagonising Beijing. That is evident not only in Mr Jiang's curtailment of this week's visit, which was supposed to last for several days, but also his reported remarks last December - when he suggested Mr Tung had less metal than Macau Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau-wah, who has cracked down on the Falun Gong's activities in the enclave. All this means that, just for once, Mr Tung deserves the benefit of the doubt on this issue - at least for now.
And that is not just the view of his acolytes. Former Chief Secretary for administration Anson Chan Fang On-sang, who no one would accuse of falling into this category, made a point of using the last speech before her recent retirement to praise the way Beijing let Mr Tung 'deal with the Falun Gong issue within the autonomy we enjoy'.
There are those, especially in North America, who would find it easier to justify their continuing scepticism if it were otherwise. For instance, an editorial in the Asian Wall Street Journal last week erroneously attributed Mrs Chan's retirement to the decision to allow the Falun Gong to hold a conference at City Hall in January.
The truth, according to her most senior colleagues, is that she decided to go long before that: almost certainly last summer, after Mr Tung refused to sack his senior special assistant Andrew Lo Cheung-on for trying to curtail popularity surveys by University of Hong Kong pollster Robert Chung Ting-yiu.
The paper also took issue with those, such as this columnist, who still believe Mr Tung may have 'found a way of nodding to the emperor while preserving Hong Kong's autonomy': by using rhetoric as a substitute for action against the Falun Gong.
If he does now move against the cult, such international critics will no doubt gleefully proclaim they were right all along - and be quite entitled to do so.
But for the moment at least, Mr Tung has not crossed the red line and taken any tangible action against the Falun Gong. And he deserves more credit than the sceptics have so far been prepared to give him.
Danny Gittings is the Post's Editorial Pages Editor
