WHEN Qian Qichen addressed the closing session of his Preliminary Working Committee (PWC) of the Special Administrative Region Preparatory Committee last week, he proclaimed with a straight face that Hong Kong was in chaos and threatened that China would not ''sit back and watch disorder'' in this city.
But the only chaos Mr Qian could possibly see in Hong Kong is to be found in an illusion that he and his colleagues have made up for themselves, now that the Government has finally tabled its innocuous political reform package without China's blessings.
The danger that such hallucinations will recur is of obvious concern to the people of Hong Kong. Will our city be in ''chaos'' every time the Hong Kong Government disagrees with Beijing? And how ironic that Chinese leaders are trying to bully Hong Kong people into submission by invoking Deng Xiaoping's decade-old threat. You would think that to these men, at least, the glorious day of Hong Kong's reunification with the Mainland would be something to look forward to - not something to use like a sword over our heads.
But even more shocking than Mr Qian's outrageous comments to his 57-member team of Hong Kong ''experts'' was their response. The PWC members, 30 of whom have been recruited from the elite of Hong Kong's business, political and education sectors, approved these intolerable remarks with applause.
How any reasonably minded person could endorse such a stunt by Mr Qian is impossible to comprehend. Either the PWC is as blind as its leader, or its members were chosen for their inability to see things as they truly are. Hong Kong cannot take such comments and such irresponsible behaviour lightly.
At the same time, China is hoping to deceive us into believing that these same yes-men and yes-women will adequately represent the interests of Hong Kong, as Beijing gives PWC members greater power to review practically every aspect of our livelihood in preparation for 1997.