前日，港澳辦主任夏寶龍作出“愛國者治港”的長篇講話，這是對《基本法》下香港政府的行政丶立法丶司法丶教育等等的體制人員定下了一個明確的要求，他們也須擁護《基本法》及效忠香港特區。
港府當局早前要求公務員作宣誓及簽署聲明的安排，其實是確認有關責任及條件。 我們認為宣誓的條文應該加上擁護中國憲法，因為憲法是中國的根本國法，所有建制中人都必須擁護效忠。
坊間有人問“愛國者”是否也要“愛黨”？ 首先香港特區是中華人民共和國的一個特區，中國的憲法適用於香港。香港居民也是中國公民，必須支持憲法，不做違反憲法的事。憲法當中規定了中國共產黨是中國的核心領導力量丶是中國的執政黨！ 反對這一點的人肯定不是愛國者，肯定不可以在治港建制當中擔任職務。因此，愛國者必須清晰知道及接受國家的執政黨是共產黨。
再說，愛國者的標準有三：
一、愛國者必然真心維護國家主權、安全、發展利益； 若如此，就不會跟隨外國的反中政客去攻擊特區政府丶攻擊中央政府，不會做反中外國勢力的代理人。
二、愛國者必然尊重和維護國家的根本制度和特別行政區的憲制秩序； 若如此，就不會攻擊中國的社會主義制度。
三、愛國者必然全力維護香港的繁榮穩定。 而香港的一部分外國勢力的代理人，之前不斷地鼓動示威暴亂，更加提倡攬炒，這樣的人根本不可能愛國。
可見愛國者標準沒有收窄，只是更加具體化了，這使進入香港權力架構中的要求增加了。
如何將愛國者治港制度化？這就需要在香港進行改革。以往的政改有“五步曲”，其中包括由中央同意作修改，最後由中央批准或備案。由此可見，中央對於香港的政改有主導權。因此我們提出中央在修改香港選舉制度當中有主導權是有根據的。
大家清楚地知道，今年香港立法會的情況與以往有別。因為早前一些立法會議員為了與中央對抗而辭職，目前議員人數不足全體議員的三分二，“五步曲”的第三步曲～立法會這一關～無法進行。我們認同唯一方法只能是：透過人大常委會利用憲法權力，設定香港特區的制度，包括選舉制度。這一點不需要反中的外國代理人同意！我們希望這件工作可以在香港立法會選舉以及特首選舉之前確定。
盧 授 建築師
香港建設專業聯會理事
香港建設專業聯會
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
Why Attempts to Build a New Anti-China Alliance Will Fail
This aricle written by KISHORE Mahbubani, 馬凱碩, born 24 October 1948, is a Singaporean civil servant, a career diplomat and an academic. During his stint at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1971 to 2004, he served as Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations and held the position of President of the United Nations Security Council between January 2001 and May 2002. Between 2004 and 2017, he served as Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore.
His article tells us the big strategic game in Asia isn’t military but economic, this may show you a different picture...
Australia, India, Japan, and the United States have perfectly legitimate concerns about China. It will be uncomfortable living with a more powerful China. And it’s equally legitimate for them to hedge by cooperating in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, informally known as the Quad. Unfortunately, the Quad will not alter the course of Asian history for two simple reasons: First, the four countries have different geopolitical interests and vulnerabilities. Second, and more fundamentally, they are in the wrong game. The big strategic game in Asia isn’t military but economic.
Australia is the most vulnerable. Its economy is highly dependent on China. Australians have been proud of their remarkable three decades of recession-free growth. That happened only because Australia became, functionally, an economic province of China: In 2018-2019, 33 percent of its exports went to China, whereas only 5 percent went to the United States.
Japan is also vulnerable but in a different way. Australia is fortunate to have friendly neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Japan only has unfriendly neighbors: China, Russia, and South Korea. It has difficult, even tense, relations with all three. It can manage difficult relations with Russia and South Korea; both have smaller economies. But the Japanese are acutely aware that they now have to adjust to a much more powerful China again. Yet this is not a new phenomenon. With the exception of the first half of the 20th century, Japan has almost always lived in peace with its more powerful neighbor, China.
As the East Asia scholar Ezra Vogel wrote in 2019, “No countries can compare with China and Japan in terms of the length of their historical contact: 1,500 years.” As he observed in his book China and Japan, the two countries maintained deep cultural ties throughout much of their past, but China, with its great civilization and resources, had the upper hand. If, for most of 1,500 years, Japan could live in peace with China, it can revert to that pattern again for the next 1,000 years. However, as in the famously slow Kabuki plays in Japan, the changes in the relationship will be very slight and incremental, with both sides moving gradually and subtly into a new modus vivendi. They will not become friends anytime soon, but Japan will signal subtly that it understands China’s core interests. Yes, there will be bumps along the way, but China and Japan will adjust slowly and steadily.
India and China have the opposite problem. As two old civilizations, they have also lived side by side over millenniums. However, they had few direct contacts, effectively kept apart by the Himalayas. Unfortunately, modern technology has no longer made the Himalayas insurmountable. Hence, the increasing number of face-to-face encounters between Chinese and Indian soldiers. Such encounters always lead to accidents, one of which happened in June 2020. Since then, a tsunami of anti-China sentiment has swept across India. Over the next few years, relations will go downhill. The avalanche has been triggered.
Yet China will be patient because time is working in its favor. In 1980, the economies of China and India were the same size. By 2020, China’s had grown five times larger. The longer-term relationship between two powers always depends, in the long run, on the relative size of the two economies. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War because the U.S. economy could vastly outspend it. Similarly, just as the United States presented China with a major geopolitical gift by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement in 2017, India did China a major geopolitical favor by not joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)。 Economics is where the big game is playing. With the United States staying out of TPP and India out of RCEP, a massive economic ecosystem centered on China is evolving in the region. Here’s one statistic to ponder on: In 2009, the size of the retail goods market in China was $1.8 trillion compared with $4 trillion for that market in the United States. Ten years later, the respective numbers were $6 trillion and $5.5 trillion. China’s total imports in the coming decade will likely exceed $22 trillion. Just as the massive U.S. consumer market in the 1970s and 1980s defeated the Soviet Union, the massive and growing Chinese consumer market will be the ultimate decider of the big geopolitical game.
This is why the Quad’s naval exercises in the Indian Ocean will not move the needle of Asian history. Over time, the different economic interests and historical vulnerabilities of the four countries will make the rationale for the Quad less and less tenable. Here’s one leading indicator: No other Asian country—not even the staunchest U.S. ally, South Korea—is rushing to join the Quad. The future of Asia will be written in four letters, RCEP, and not the four letters in Quad.
JANUARY 27, 2021.
The last paragraph, in Chinese 所以，四國在印度洋的軍演動不了亞洲歷史的指針。久而久之，四國不同的經濟利益和歷史性弱勢，將使成立Quad的理由站不住腳。且沒有任何其他亞洲國家～即使美國堅定的盟友韓國～急於加入Quad。亞洲的未來將由四個字母——RCEP而非Quad來書寫，is very enlightening about how to see the future of our this world.
S. L. LI Engineer
HKFDP
