Protests Mark Anniversary of Hong Kong Hand-Over

Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao unveiled a black, tower-like “reunification monument” Thursday and said Hong Kong has stayed prosperous and free in the two years since its return to China. Hundreds of protesters didn’t agree.

The official ceremony marking the second anniversary of the July 1, 1997, hand-over of Hong Kong was dignified, although chants of dissent from two small groups of anti-China protesters were clearly audible from outside the convention center.

“The people of Hong Kong are undoubtedly capable of administering Hong Kong well,” Hu told an audience of officials, including Hong Kong’s leader, Tung Chee-hwa, as he unveiled the monument. “The previous social and economic systems, as well as the way of life in Hong Kong, remain unchanged.”

In Washington, meanwhile, the Clinton administration told Congress that the first two years of Hong Kong’s autonomy under Chinese rule have gone far better than the United States government expected.

“Hong Kong has largely remained autonomous, open and observant of the rule of law--far more so than any had anticipated,” Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth said at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia.

But in Hong Kong, demonstrators demanded an end to China’s one-party Communist system and the release of political prisoners.

There were minor scuffles as police tried to block the protesters from getting too close. Police later confiscated the protesters’ megaphones, saying they were responding to residents’ complaints of noise. No one was arrested.

Later, Hu took a boat trip through Victoria Harbor, only to come alongside more protesters who had sailed in to complain about a land scam in China.

The hand-over anniversary is a public holiday, but few Hong Kong residents were celebrating amid a recession and accusations that the affluent territory is fast surrendering its autonomy.

“What’s there to celebrate? They are wasting our money on the celebrations,” said Lau Kam-wah, a retiree who was out walking early Thursday.

After 156 years of British rule, Hong Kong was reunited with China at the height of the territory’s financial prowess. The tiny former colony, now China’s “special administrative region,” has kept its free-market economy and British-style judiciary and civil service under a formula dubbed “one country, two systems,” which guarantees autonomy to Hong Kong.