Politicians, lawyers, academics and the media in Hong Kong seethed with anger yesterday after a senior Chinese legislator criticised the territory's highest court for making a controversial ruling on immigration. They accused Beijing of weakening Hong Kong's autonomy under the one-country-two-systems scheme.
Mr Qiao Xiaoyang, vice-chairman of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of China National People's Congress (NPC), said in Beijing on Tuesday that Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal should have sought the NPC's interpretation of Hong Kong's constitution before its ruling, which gave residency rights to all children of Hong Kong residents.
"The whole world should know what is happening to Hong Kong," the Democratic Party leader, Mr Martin Lee, said on Hong Kong government radio.
"The whole world should know these promises are being broken by our own government in collusion with the central government in Beijing. If we allow this to happen, it will happen again and again."
The Hong Kong government asked Beijing two months ago to overrule its own court's interpretation of the constitution, known as the Basic Law, saying that opening the doors to a possible 1.67 million immigrants would place an unbearable burden on the territory.
The NPC is this week expected to grant the request, which critics fear may set a precedent for Beijing to overrule future court decisions governing freedom of speech and assembly in the territory.
The South China Morning Post said the implications of what Mr Qiao said were "potentially even more worrying than anything else that has so far occurred throughout this saga". Hong Kong officials had at least respected judicial independence by recognising that the government could not question the process by which the Court of Final Appeal reached its decision. Now Mr Qiao "has cast such qualifications aside with his assertion that the court broke the Basic Law by not referring the case to the NPC.
"What Mr Qiao is saying is not just that the NPC can, in effect, overrule a court decision, but also that the court should never have been allowed even to deliver such a judgment without first consulting Beijing."
The Hong Kong government was accused by 13 academics in a denunciation published in Hong Kong newspapers of manipulating public opinion, disrespecting the legislature and judiciary and polarising public sentiment against new immigrants.
The outgoing US consul in Hong Kong, Mr Richard Boucher, also voiced his concern yesterday at Beijing's move. Washington was watching developments in the case, he said.
"We are concerned that broad or frequent exceptions to the Court of Final Appeal's power of final jurisdiction could erode the status and independent authority of the Hong Kong judiciary." Such challenges also raised "questions about the ultimate fate of the rule of law".