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SCMP Reporter

MAINLAND authorities are training an elite corps of officials and 'trouble-shooters' to be stationed in Hong Kong after 1997.

  This, together with the garrison of 8,000-odd crack troops as well as the untold numbers of cadres and agents who have already infiltrated the territory, will ensure the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) relatively tight grip over the Special Administrative Region (SAR).

  Moreover, Beijing is putting the finishing touches to its policy on CCP activities in post-1997 Hong Kong.

  If the hardliners have their way, the 54-million strong party might operate openly in the SAR and even field candidates for local elections.

  Chinese sources in Beijing said that units, including the party's Organisation Department and the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, had over the past 18 months picked several hundred young turks for the SAR.

  These are rising stars in their late 30s and 40s with department or bureau-level ranks. Mostly graduates of prestigious universities, they have passed rigorous security and ideological checks.

  The Hong Kong-bound cadets are now being coached for at least one year in subjects including English, Hong Kong law, security issues, and international trade at special centres in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The bulk of the trainees will also undertake short-term courses in administration, law or business in Western universities.

 'The cadets are not supposed to tell relatives and friends about the training and their future posting,' a Beijing source said. 'Often they just 'disappear' under the pretext of a job transfer to another city.'   Neither the Joint Declaration nor the Basic Law has made provisions for mainland officials working in the SAR administration.

  In theory, this elite corps would service 'peripheral' units such as the Hong Kong offices of State Council departments including the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, and various economic ministries.

  However, neither has the Basic Law made allowance for strange creatures like the provisional legislature that will be Hong Kong's law-making body in the first year of the transition, said a source familiar with Beijing's Hong Kong strategy.

    The officials under training have had ample experience in areas including finance, business, law, security, labour, social welfare and culture.

  The source said some among them would be attached to SAR government departments in an 'undercover manner' or by assuming titles such as 'consultants' or 'liaison officials with Beijing'.

  'If everything is going well between Beijing and the SAR, such 'liaison personnel' will function as benevolent watchdogs,' he said.

  'If Beijing wants to tighten control, such mainland mandarins have the wherewithal - including direct access to the State Council - to crack the whip on SAR administrative appointees.'   These 'mandarins from up north', who will function above ground, pale in numbers beside the estimated 10,000-odd cadres, agents and plenipotentiaries who have either landed in Hong Kong or will be arriving in the next few years.

  Most of them have come legally, as businessmen, academics, researchers, journalists, or relatives of Hong Kong citizens.

  In addition to 'up front' departments such as the industrial and foreign trade ministries, they report to 'proletarian dictatorship' organs including the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Ministry of Public Security, and the intelligence outfits of the People's Liberation Army, the International Liaison Department, and the United Front Department.

  A minority have become the staff of the 'private liaison offices' maintained in Hong Kong by senior leaders including Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Yang Shangkun.

  Partly thanks to the recent liberalisation of the Hong Kong Government's immigration policy, such cadres and agents have over the past two years had a new route - and a new disguise - for 'infiltrating' the territory.

  SAR-bound agents are first sent to the United States or other Western countries for brief stints in universities or corporations. They then apply to work in Hong Kong companies - both ordinary ones and those with Chinese connections - as 'Western-trained Chinese professionals'.

  Various ministries and institutions in China have, with the help of the MSS, set up special units to provide the cover for 'infiltrators' who are going to Hong Kong directly or through a Western country.

  Local sources have identified at least three academic and 'international exchange' units in Guangdong which are staging grounds for Hong Kong.

  In a few instances, the MSS and such 'spring board' outfits have engineered disinformation campaigns to smooth the cadres' entry into non-leftist circles in Hong Kong society.

  One familiar tactic is to make out that they had suffered political 'persecution' because of participation in the 1989 democracy movement.

  By and large, these agents and 'infiltrators' will after 1997 complement the role of the formally trained mandarins to be attached to the SAR administration.

  And, as many are already well-established staff in ordinary Hong Kong units including banks, newspapers and colleges, they are in a position to funnel unique information to relevant departments in Beijing.

  However, not a small proportion of them represent ministries and units - such as military intelligence or particular CCP factions and clans - that have no direct relations with Beijing's Hong Kong policy.

  And it is conceivable that power struggles might erupt between cadres from different backgrounds - as well as their new-found supporters and joint-venture partners in Hong Kong.

  And what about the future operations of the CCP, which has all along been an underground, super-secretive organisation in the territory?   The Basic Law is murky about the post-1997 modus operandi of the world's largest Communist party: what is clear is only that the CCP must work within SAR laws.

  Informed sources said Beijing was debating whether the CCP should come in from the cold after the changeover; and if so, how open and aggressive it should be.

  The more hardline among Beijing's Hong Kong policy makers have argued that the CCP should register formally as a political party, that it should openly recruit members and field candidates for parliamentary elections, though not necessarily for the first one in mid-1998.

  There are signs that the tough line is gaining ground. A harbinger of the future can be found in the dongzu (CCP cells) that are sprouting at an alarming rate in local Chinese corporations as well as unexpected places like the universities.

  According to veteran academics, cells have recently been set up in most of the territory's institutes of higher learning.

  Up to now, these dongzu have stayed secret and their role is passive: ensuring that party members among Chinese nationals teaching in the colleges do not succumb to 'bourgeois liberalisation'.

  'But who knows whether the cells will report our conversations and political views to state security,' said a Hong Kong-born university lecturer, who added most of his colleagues had exercised self-censorship to avoid trouble.

  As more Chinese professionals who are CCP members find employment in large institutions such as banks, trading hongs and TV stations, dongzus are expected to be set up there - and to do what Beijing would consider to be the right thing.



China grooms cadres for 1997