Hong Kong civil servants to get HK$23.7 million worth of ‘national studies training’, some of it conducted by Beijing officials

Basic Law expert Qiao Xiaoyang will speak at a seminar on the mini-constitution on Friday, the second mainland representative to do so in a week

Reading Time:3 minutes

Qiao Xiaoyang will arrive in Hong Kong on Thursday. Photo: Handout

Published: 7:30am, 17 Apr 2018Updated: 7:30am, 17 Apr 2018

The Hong Kong government will pour HK$23.7 million (US$3 million) into “national studies training” for civil servants this financial year – an increase of 30 per cent from the previous year – and has invited a Basic Law expert from Beijing to brief them about constitutional affairs on Friday.

Qiao Xiaoyang, who recently retired as chairman of the Law Committee in the national legislature, will be the second mainland representative within a week to speak at seminars on the city’s mini-constitution.

On Sunday, Beijing’s liaison office director Wang Zhimin hit out at local activists for challenging China’s sovereignty at a symposium that current Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, senior government leaders and former leader Tung Chee-hwa attended.

The official visit by Qiao, a former chairman of the Basic Law Committee in the National People’s Congress, comes amid Beijing’s rising impatience over the city’s stalled progress in enacting its own national security law to ban any act of treason, secession, sedition, and subversion against the central government.

Liaison office director Wang Zhimin hits out at ‘Hong Kong independence radicals’. Photo: Felix Wong

Qiao, who arrives on Thursday, will address senior civil servants, ministers and members of Lam’s cabinet, the Executive Council, on Friday. The next day, he will attend a forum organised by the Joint Committee for the Promotion of the Basic Law of Hong Kong.