主题：纪念香港回归七周年 -- 林小筑

香港人又要游行要什么民主。不知道整天搞什么搞。

[提示：原图站已失效]

China Resumes Control of Hong Kong, Concluding 156 Years of British Rule

By EDWARD A. GARGAN

RELATED HEADLINES

Time of Uncertainty begins: Will Beijing Honor Vows?

Year of the Trojan Horse

Empire's Sunset? Not Just Yet

Hong Kong's People

The Biggest Colony

Tiananmen Square

OTHER HEADLINES

Clinton Outlines Tax Cut Plan, Putting Emphasis on Education

Registry Laws Tar Sex-Crime Convicts With Broad Brush

Benchmarks of Justice: In 9 Extraordinary Months, the High Court Developed a Vast Panorama of Landmarks

Crime Drops, Again

North Korea Agrees to Talks

Art Dealer Accused of Fraud

In Jail and in the Spotlight

Tyson Asks Forgiveness

HONG KONG, Tuesday, July 1 -- In the first moments after midnight, in a ceremony of solemn precision and martial music, China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong today, ending 156 years of British colonial rule.

Seconds after British soldiers lowered the Union Jack for the last time to the strains of 'God Save the Queen,' China's red banner was raised, marking the transfer of this free-wheeling capitalist territory to Communist control.

It was an event awaited with trepidation as well as excitement since 1984, when Britain and China agreed on terms for the transfer of power over this territory wrested from China in the 19th century wars over the opium trade. And it ushered a time of uncertainty over whether China would honor its pledge to maintain Hong Kong's way of life largely unaltered for the next 50 years.

For many ordinary people in the streets of Hong Kong, this was a time of celebration, not necessarily over the departure of the British or the arrival of the new masters from Beijing, but for experience of witnessing a big moment in history. [Page A9.]

In the convention center where the handover of power took place, China's President, Jiang Zemin, using a Mandarin dialect as alien to Hong Kong's Cantonese-speaking people as the English of the British authorities, declared the event 'a festival for the Chinese nation and a victory for the universal cause of peace and justice.'

'The return of Hong Kong to the motherland after a century of vicissitudes indicates that from now on, our Hong Kong compatriots have become true masters of this Chinese land and that Hong Kong has now entered a new era of development,' Mr. Jiang said.

Change came quickly as the territory's new rulers assumed control.

At the stroke of midnight, Hong Kong's elected legislature was abolished, and a Beijing-appointed body of lawmakers took its place. A range of Hong Kong's civil liberties were rolled back as new constraints were placed on the right to protest and association, and any form of speech promoting the independence of Taiwan or Tibet was banned.

Change came in small ways too. Across Hong Kong, police officers, fire fighters and all the uniformed services unpinned their colonial insignia and replaced it with the new symbols of China's Hong Kong. The British coat of arms was removed from above the main government building at midnight, and the royal emblem was pried from the Rolls-Royce that used to ferry the British Governor about and will now serve Hong Kong's new Chief Executive.

Quietly, almost forgotten, Prince Charles of Britain and the former colonial Governor, Chris Patten, were driven from the handover ceremony to the harbor front, where the royal yacht Britannia waited to bear them away from Hong Kong.

Shortly after the midnight change of sovereignty, President Jiang gave the oath of office to Beijing's choice to govern this territory, Tung Chee-hwa, a 60-year-old British-educated shipping magnate.

As dawn broke, an unbroken procession of Chinese Army armored personnel carriers, trucks and buses carrying 4,000 soldiers streamed over the border and through the streets of Hong Kong. At villages along the way, thousands of Hong Kongers waited in the rain, waving flags and bouquets of flowers and shouting welcomes to the soldiers.

British rule ended in a ceremony whose details exhausted the negotiating skills of both sides.

On a simple dais inside the just completed Exhibition and Convention Center, two pairs of flagpoles -- one flying the Union Jack and the British Hong Kong flag, the other bare -- stood before chairs for Mr. Jiang's party and those accompanying Prince Charles.

Prince Charles spoke briefly. 'The United Kingdom,' he declared, 'has been proud and privileged to have had responsibility for the people of Hong Kong, to have provided a framework of opportunity in which Hong Kong has so conspicuously succeeded, and to have been part of the success which the people of Hong Kong have made of their opportunities.'

'God Save the Queen' was played by a band of Scots Guards in tall, bearskin hats, and the Union Jack was brought down.

After a five-second pause, time for British cymbals to stop vibrating, the Chinese national anthem was played and the Chinese flag raised alongside the new flag of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong had returned to Chinese rule.

The transfer from British rule began at 4:30 P.M. Monday, when the doors of Government House, the home for British governors since 1855, opened and Mr. Patten, his wife, Lavender, and their three daughters walked down the steps.

Drawn up at attention in the sweeping circular drive was the police band in snow-white tunics. In a blue suit, the bags under his eyes heavier than usual, his now gray-white hair a bit disheveled, Mr. Patten mounted a small stepped dais.

The band broke into the first stanza of 'God Save the Queen,' and Mr. Patten, Hong Kong's 28th Governor, lowered his head, swallowing heavily in a surge of emotion, emotion that would shake the Governor repeatedly through the day.

Eight officers from the Royal Police Training School snapped through a sharply choreographed flipping of rifles, turns and slow-step marching in a salute to the last Governor.

Stepping from the dais, Mr. Patten walked slowly down a line of representatives of each of the territory's services, from the Correctional Services Department to the Auxiliary Medical Services, all in wilting white dress uniforms.

Then, as a single bugler played 'Last Post,' a thin drizzle brushed the courtyard, and the British flag slipped down the flagpole. The police band struck up Mr. Patten's favorite song, 'Highland Cathedral,' and with the folded flag on a royal blue pillow, he stepped into a Rolls-Royce.

Slowly, the long black car flying the Governor's ensign from the hood circled the courtyard before Government House three times, a Chinese ritual performed by all previous governors to signal 'we shall return.'

As Mr. Patten's car pulled from the gates of Government House, gates that still bore the Queen's seal, crowds waved and cheered. A small contingent of police officers in their green summer uniforms swung the iron gates closed, ending 122 years of British residence.

The drizzle turned to showers and then to a downpour that washed the harbor front in sheets of monsoon-borne rains. Still, the British farewell ceremony began sharply at 6:15 P.M. as a gray sky melted into hues of gold and rose. Two dragon dance teams rose and fell across a tarmac ground that once was the main British naval base here.

A succession of performances by choirs and orchestras, and arias sung by Dame Gwyneth Jones and Warren Mok followed.

With rain pelting down on him, Mr. Patten delivered his final speech as Governor, a short piece of oratory that remained as robustly defiant as any he has given, a declaration of his own principles as Governor and a public challenge to much of Chief Executive Tung's philosophy of governance.

'Our own nation's contribution here,' he said, 'was to provide the scaffolding that enabled the people of Hong Kong to ascend: the rule of law, clean and light-handed government, the values of a free society. The beginnings of representative government and democratic accountability.'

'Hong Kong's values are decent values,' he continued. 'They are universal values. They are the values of the future in Asia as elsewhere, a future in which the happiest and the richest communities, and the most confident and the most stable too, will be those that best combine political liberty and economic freedom as we do today.'

At 8:45 in the evening, just after the fireworks celebrating British rule ended, 509 officers, soldiers and sailors from the Chinese Army began moving over the border in glossy black Audis, buses and open-back trucks, in which troops stood at attention, their white gloved hands gripping the wooden side rails. Other trucks in camouflage paint, some with green canvas covers, followed slowly behind.

In Hong Kong's newly built convention center, a curving, sculpted-roofed edifice jutting into the harbor, a banquet was given by the British for 4,000 guests, including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and China's Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, who has spearheaded Beijing's arrangements for Hong Kong.

Over Scottish salmon, stuffed chicken breast and a red fruit pudding with raspberry sauce, Hong Kong's wealthiest and most powerful people, British and Chinese alike, ate their last meal under a British flag.

Neither President Jiang nor Prime Minister Li Peng, the first Communist Chinese leaders to set foot in colonial Hong Kong, attended the banquet.

With only an hour of sovereignty left, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook of Britain, relaxed with hands in his pockets, waited at the entrance of the new Hong Kong convention center, Chief Executive Tung at his side, for the arrival of President Jiang.

An honor guard of Black Watch in white jackets and kilts stood at attention.

Mr. Jiang's black bulletproof Mercedes, with both Hong Kong and Chinese license plates, arrived moments later. The Chinese President was helped from the car, and Mr. Patten shook his hand, saying simply, 'Welcome to Hong Kong.'

Against the surge of patriotic sentiment and the wisps of nostalgia for the departed British, there were protests from pro-democracy figures who had been expelled from the legislature with the advent of Chinese rule.

From the balcony of the Legislative Council building, Martin Lee, the leader of the pro-democracy forces in the disbanded legislature, told thousands of demonstrators that democracy would return to Hong Kong.

'We know,' he told the crowd below, 'that without a democratically constituted government and legislature, there is no way for our people to be insured that good laws will be passed to protect their freedoms.'

'If there is no democracy, there is no rule of law,' he continued. 'We want Hong Kong and China to advance together and not step back together. We are proud to be Chinese, more proud than ever before. But we ask: Why is it our leaders in China will not give us more democracy? Why must they take away the modest democracy we have fought so hard to win from the British Government?'

Meanwhile, detachments of Chinese troops fanned out across Hong Kong, taking possession of military bases. At the Prince of Wales barracks, still bearing that name this morning, an honor guard stood at attention while the Chinese flag was raised. And on the radio station that had served British forces here, 107.4 FM, there was nothing but the hiss of empty static.

At Possession Point, the place where on Jan. 26, 1841, Capt. Edward Belcher first raised the British flag, there were memories, expressions of happiness, pride and worry.

On a bench in what is now Hollywood Road Park, Choy Sum Mui, 75, reflected on her long life and the future that awaits her under a new sovereign.

'I came to Hong Kong when the Japanese bombed my village,' she said, speaking slowly. 'I'm illiterate, so I don't know much about things unless people tell me. People say this is Possession Point, but it doesn't mean much to me. I've never seen a Communist before. I don't know what they are like. Really, I'm so old already, all this change doesn't mean much to me.'

On Possession Street, a Mr. Lam, 72, said: 'It's a good thing we can finally get rid of the imperialists. We're all Chinese. I feel great. This land belongs to China.'

看到内地有些地方超过自己，就要玩一种新的时髦。否则心理不平衡。

A New Leader Outlines His Vision for Hong Kong

By EDWARD A. GARGAN

RELATED HEADLINE

U.S. to Fill the Void British Left in Asia

OTHER HEADLINES

Health Care Bills Don't Meet Goals, Budget Aides Say: Fewer Children Benefit: Congressional Office Suggests Only 1.5 Million Uninsured Will Gain Coverage

In a Reversal, G.O.P. Courts The 'Greens'

Voters in Mexico Venting Outrage at Ruling Party: Big Losses Seem Likely: Political Landscape Changing After 7 Decades of PRI's Authoritarian Control

Tainted Hero: Neighborhood Split on Tyson

Beachgoers Boiling at New York's Sewage

New Fund-Raising Questions

Officer Justified in Shooting

Agency Criticizes the F.A.A.

Robert Mitchum Dies

HONG KONG, July 1 -- For the first time in Hong Kong's history a Hong Konger, Tung Chee-hwa, stepped before his people as their leader today, explaining in their own dialect of Cantonese how the onset of Chinese rule, and his stewardship of the territory, would change their lives.

In what may be the first test of China's pledge that Hong Kong would be allowed its own distinct form of government, the police allowed a demonstration by a group, the Hong Kong Alliance, that China has branded subversive. About 2,500 protesters marched, some carrying red signs saying 'Build a Democratic China' and 'Put an End to the Dictatorship in China.'

The marchers, by applying for a permit, had complied with rules in force under colonial administration; new rules restricting demonstrations had been laid down by the new legislature appointed by Beijing within hours of Hong Kong's reversion to China, and technically the marchers were not in compliance with those.

For most Hong Kongers, though, the demonstration was a sideshow to the speech by Mr. Tung, China's choice as Hong Kong's new chief executive, who for the first time outlined in detail how he planned to lead what has become a special autonomous zone of China. In a detailed review of the issues that consume Hong Kongers, Mr. Tung promised to solve the territory's housing problem -- 'the aim is to achieve a home ownership rate of 70 percent in 10 years,' he said -- as well as to reinvigorate the school system by improving teachers' qualifications and insure full day schooling at the primary level, introduce a mandatory retirement fund, and establish a government Commission for the Elderly.

'Like most people in Hong Kong,' he said, 'I am not a passer-by. Our home, our career, and our hope are here in Hong Kong. We have deep feelings for Hong Kong and a sense of mission to build a better Hong Kong.'

Then, Hong Kong's new leader laid out a vision of a Government far more involved in people's lives than the old colonial administration. Ranging from exhortations for grown children to live with their parents, to direct involvement in the housing market, to steps to build and encourage a high-tech industrial belt in the territory. Mr. Tung's governmental activism, bred from both a belief in a quasi-Confucian paternalism and the instincts acquired running a shipping conglomerate, suggests a new direction for Hong Kong, one more akin to Singapore, which he has said he admires.

Mr. Tung's address came on the first day of Chinese rule, a day marked by a blizzard of concerts, operas, martial arts displays, what was billed as the world's largest karaoke and a sky-scalding display of fireworks and laser lights, accompanied by the elegaic strains of Yo Yo Ma's cello.

Mr. Tung spoke just hours after the red flag of China was run up flagpoles across the territory, from the former British military compounds to the glittering five-star hotels on the waterfront. His address was a speech for everyone, ranging from grand themes of identity and values to daily life concerns. It was, Mr. Tung explained, a blueprint that begins charting a Hong Kong different in many ways from the one left behind by the British.

Mr. Tung made only a passing reference to the loss of democracy in Hong Kong, saying only that his government would 'resolutely move forward to a more democratic form of government in accordance with the provisions of the Basic Law,' the mini-constitution devised by Beijing for Hong Kong.

China's President, Jiang Zemin, also addressed Hong Kong's elite gathered at the new convention center, in a speech intended both to reassure Hong Kongers and to confirm his own stature as the man who oversaw the end of colonial rule.

Speaking in the Mandarin dialect of northern China, Mr. Jiang repeatedly told Hong Kongers that they were to govern themselves, that their fate was in their own hands, that Hong Kong, a place so utterly different from the rest of China, would chart its own course.

'Hong Kong will continue to practice the capitalist system,' declared Mr. Jiang, as the members of the new government, the territory's multitude of tycoons, its social elite and a bevy of foreign dignitaries listened, 'with its previous socioecoomic system and way of life remaining unchanged and its laws remaining basically unchanged while the main part of the nation persists in the socialist system.'

In an apparent test of the right to demonstrate, the group of protesters, organized by the Hong Kong Alliance, marched across through central Hong Kong this afternoon. Like a rally of democratic protesters who climbed the Legislative Council building just after midnight this morning, they were given enough leeway by the authorities so that no confrontation occurred.

The police seemed to handle the march in the same way they had in the past, even though new civil order legislation gives the government a legal means to block a demonstration on the basis of a threat to China's national security.

The march was relatively small by Hong Kong standards. 'Today we are here to fight for democracy within China,' said Lee Cheuk-yan, one of the organizers. 'We are fighting for democracy now as a part of China, from within China for the first time. I think that's very significant.'

Mr. Lee said he was 'warned' by the police that the march had exceeded the 2,000 demonstrators specified in its application, reaching what the police estimated to be about 2,500 marchers. Mr. Lee said he responded that the group had actually only reached about 2,300, not too much above the original number expected.

However, senior superintendent Gregory Lam, said the police had not issued a warning but had simply pointed out that the march had exceeded the number in the application and asked the group to try not to let the demonstration grow any larger.

'There was no problem,' Mr. Lam said. 'We estimated the crowd at 2,500. They thought it was about 2,300. We don't want it getting too large and we told them that.'

No effort was made to break up the march, which soon dissipated.

Mr. Tung, who has come under considerable criticism for imposing new constraints on civil liberties, has struggled in the last six months since Beijing named him chief executive to overcome skepticism here about his loyalties and motives.

Some of the questions surrounding Mr. Tung's autonomy from Beijing stem from China's bailout of his virtually bankrupt shipping company in the 1980's, a financial rescue he has never explained. Indeed, he has refused repeatedly to explain the details of that arrangement although he insists it was, in his words, a purely 'commercial' transaction.

As one friend of Mr. Tung put it, however, 'he knows very well that Beijing saved his company. They haven't forgotten and he hasn't either.'

He isalso immersed in the West, having spent six years in England. He went on to the United States where he spent a decade, working mostly for his father's shipping company. While there, and during his tenure as chairman of his shipping company, Orient Overseas (International) Ltd., he developed and cultivated contacts with a broad network of American and European business and government leaders.

His choice by China was ordained 18 months ago during a visit to Beijing when Mr. Jiang singled him out from a group of Hong Kong luminaries for a warm handshake.

Because of his seeming eagerness to please Beijing -- Mr. Tung immediately embraced China's demand that Hong Kong's elected legislature be abolished and that a range of civil liberties be curtailed -- many Hong Kongers have come to regard him as a puppet. Indeed, in the last opinion poll taken before Mr. Tung's investiture early this morning, the outgoing British governor, Christopher Patten, won an approval rating of 79 percent, 22 percentage points above that of Mr. Tung.

Today, Mr. Tung sought to speak as his own man, committed to his Chinese heritage while engaging the virtues of the West that Hong Kong has so eagerly absorbed.

'Every society has to have its own values to provide a common purpose and a sense of unity,' declared Mr. Tung. 'We will continue to encourage diversity in our society, but we must also reaffirm and respect the fine traditional Chinese values, including filial piety, love for the family, modesty and integrity and the desire for continuous improvement. We value plurality, but discourage open confrontation; we strive for liberty, but not at the expense of the rule of law; we respect minority views but are mindful of wider interests; we protect individual rights, but also shoulder collective responsibilities.'

'I hope,' intoned Mr. Tung, 'these values will provide the foundation for unity in our society.'

Recognizing that an erosion of more traditional family values has occurred to some extent in Hong Kong, Mr. Tung insisted that government 'will encourage families to live with their elderly members.'

Hong Kong's principal English-language newspaper, The South China Morning Post, argued that Mr. Tung must pay more attention to the territory's political needs. 'His first, and most critical, political challenge,' the paper insisted in this morning's edition, 'will be to restore the degree of democracy that existed before today's swearing-in of the Provisional Legislature,' the Beijing-appointed body that will now pass Hong Kong's laws.

Reaction to Mr. Tung's speech across Hong Kong ran the spectrum from enthusiasm to doubt. Cheng Suk-hon, a 48-year-old property manager, was on his way home on the subway and said that he was impressed and reassured. 'I did watch Mr. Tung on television this morning,' he said. 'I'm confident of him governing Hong Kong. He's the first chief executive of Hong Kong so he must set a good example. He calmed people's concerns. I think he'll keep his promises.'

But Kitty Ho, a college junior who has been studying in the United States and who was scampering toward the harborfront to watch the evening's fireworks, was less charitable. 'He can say anything he wants but he won't necessarily do it,' she said. 'He's been saying the same thing over and over again. I don't trust him because he's just saying what he's been told to do.'

各堂口头目都有西方**银行分行给一笔贷款，有的是给项目。

那个民什么党嘛，主席到了美国领会一笔经费

连香港这么讲实利的社会都会给搞得这么乱折腾。“民主”这个主义的煽动性强啊。

你以为那么多人想玩时髦，就能一起玩。

如果以这种心态去看香港、去管理香港，能行吗？

没有仔细研究是怎么回事，就这么妄下结论，能行吗？

香港人毕竟是中国人啊。

我看似乎是你自己的心态问题吧。

香港如果不回归, 更完蛋.

我看了新华声同志很多文章。

明显有左派的意味，很多文章有些瞎掰，臆断的意思。

香港的这种民主行为是历史的必然，经济水平发展上去了，民主的要求就有强大的生命力，附近的台湾就是一个铁证。

至于内地要全面超过香港，这10年是不太可能的。

把香港的这种行为认为是赶时髦，只能显出自己的幼稚。

有谁愿意在高温下订着烈日赶时髦？

我个人比较认同成龙的世界笑话论。

你看：

香港在很多地方可以值得我们学习的。

他们工作很敬业，很努力。职业化、专业化程度远远高于内地许多地方。

许多人认为香港经济没有了大陆，就没有这么好。那就错了。本来这就是外因，更不要说，经济都是相互的了。

主要还是香港人自己努力得来的。也就是香港人提倡的那种精神。

如果总是以酸溜溜的心态来看香港，来管香港，那真的是香港人的悲哀、中国的悲哀。

台湾人的民主当然不怎么样.

但是你嘲笑人家这种尝试的努力,就如吃不到葡萄的人讥笑在吃葡萄的人一样,说人家吃的是酸葡萄而已.

比如，选举和赌博的一体化？

别说这是个别现象哦。