BRITAIN yesterday issued an unprecedented public condemnation of Chinese plans to scrap Hong Kong's elected legislature, as protesters in the colony hurled eggs at coaches ferrying pro-Beijing stalwarts across the border to China to set up a rival "provisional" legislative assembly.
Setting Britain and China on a collision course, the strongly-worded protest accused China of breaching its treaty obligations. It came on the eve of a meeting today in the Chinese town of Shenzhen to fix the composition of a tame, unelected legislative council.
"There is no justification for China to replace a legislature elected openly and fairly by more than one million Hong Kong people," the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Malcolm Rifkind, complained in a long statement brimming with veiled but unmistakable threats.
The Chinese ambassador to Britain, Mr Jiang Enzhu, was summoned to see Mr Rifkind late on Thursday for what Foreign Office officials described as a "robust" statement of the British position. The ambassador responded by blaming Britain for the current crisis and said it should "face reality."
Mr Rifkind hinted heavily at wider pressure on Beijing: "We will work closely with the United States, the European Union and other international partners in monitoring observance of provisions of the Joint Declaration in Hong Kong."
Britain has been in touch with governments around the world in the last week to ensure they maintain pressure. The US has made clear that in its view the provisional legislature is "unwise, unjustified, unnecessary".
No date for reciprocal visits to China and the US by President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin will be set until after the handover next July 1st.
Mr Martin Lee, Hong Kong's leading democratic politician and long-standing opponent of Beijing, said last night: "Although it is the 11th hour, this is the only responsible step for Britain to take. Now the whole world knows that China is breaking its solemn international treaty."
With today's naming of a provisional legislature in Shenzhen, Hong Kong will have two rival law-making bodies, as well as two rival sources of executive authority - the current governor, Mr Chris Patten, and his China-appointed successor, shipping magnate Mr Tung Chee-hwa.
Fearful of prosecution by British authorities, who consider the new legislature illegitimate and even illegal, the new 60-member assembly will have to meet in China until the handover.
"Tomorrow will be a very black, dark day for Hong Kong," said Ms Emily Lau, a member of an existing legislature elected last September but which China has vowed to disband. "It is really very sad to see that the Chinese will ride roughshod over public opinion to form this body. It has no legitimacy, no credibility. Its members do not represent the people of Hong Kong but only themselves."
Among those who have put their names forward as prospective members of the new provisional legislature are 27 politicians who lost at the ballot box last September.
The Hong Kong government issued its own formal denunciation of China's plan to establish a shadow legislature, saying the move would "confuse the community and place the civil service in a very difficult position."
Mr Rifkind accused China of violating the 1984 Joint Declaration, the Sino-British accord signed by Lady Thatcher and since purged communist leader, Mr Zhao Ziyang. "A body chosen by a hand-picked `electorate' of 400 is not, in any reasonable sense, a `legislature constituted by elections', as required by the Joint Declaration."
China, however, argues that Britain is to blame because it went ahead with Mr Patten's 1992 political reforms without the consent of Beijing, a step which it says violated the 1984 accord.