It's official: in its first interpretation of the Basic Law requested by the Hong Kong courts, Beijing concluded that the city must follow the mainland's law on state immunity.
This means states that have entered into business deals cannot be taken to a Hong Kong court should the agreement go sour, setting in stone an eventuality lawyers primed themselves for months ago.
It was the same position expressed in letters from the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong shown to the Court of Final Appeal months ago, and a draft response presented by the vice-chairman of the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission, Li Fei, on Wednesday.
And yesterday, all 157 members of the National People's Congress Standing Committee voted in favour of the interpretation.
'I see that in [Hong Kong's] Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeal and the Court of Final Appeal, judges showed differences in understanding,' Li said yesterday. 'What does this illustrate? It illustrates the need to clarify the application of state immunity policy in Hong Kong.'
The need for a ruling stemmed from a debt dispute between the Democratic Republic of Congo and United States-based fund FG Hemisphere Associates. Congo claimed it was immune from prosecution in Hong Kong, triggering the argument of whether Hong Kong follows Beijing's practice of absolute immunity or can continue with its pre-1997 regime that denies immunity to states in commercial deals.