Jump to the beginning of content

Press Briefings & Releases

Press Briefings & Releases


Transcript of CE's briefing in Beijing
******************************

Following is the transcript (English portion) of a media session by the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, in Beijing this afternoon (March 7):

Question: According to Xinhua News Agency, President Hu said the "One Country, Two Systems" should be reviewed. Did anybody tell you it is necessary to review the "One Country, Two Systems"?

Chief Executive: I am not quite sure which newspaper you have been reading.

Question: Are there any differences between what Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao think about "One Country, Two Systems"?

Chief Executive: Absolutely none.

Question: Do they welcome debate in Hong Kong?

Chief Executive: What both (leaders) have said is that: to read and study once more what Mr Deng Xiaoping had said about 20 years ago about "One Country, Two Systems" and how it should work is very helpful to realise the thought process behind what "One Country, Two Systems" is all about, and, therefore, it would be very helpful for the constitutional development in HK for the future. Both (leaders) welcome calm and reasonable discussion on this particular subject.

Question: The leaders said a lot about Hong Kong's economic development. What about universal suffrage, especially there is a suggestion to have universal suffrage in 2007? It seems that they are asking Hong Kong people to focus on economic issues. Does that mean that they don't want us to spend a lot of time on political debate?

Chief Executive: First of all, economic issues are very important to all of us. As I have said, we have good developments right now, but we should never take these things for granted. We need to continue to be on the alert. Economic restructuring is a very difficult task. We need to continue to work very hard. To your other question, the focus of the Central Government at the moment is about what is behind the Basic Law; what is behind the thoughts when "One Country, Two Systems" was developed. There are six principles which I have spoken often, and that we need to understand the principles behind that in order to help to develop the constitutional development for the future. So, that is, we are at that stage right now. We need to go through that stage before we can move forward to the next stage about the timetable and what kind of structure.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)

Ends/Sunday, March 7, 2004
NNNN

Back

2004 | Important notices Last revision date: 1 July 2007
Web Accessibility Recognition SchemeWCAG 2.0 AAValid HTML 4.01