Top HK policemen sees 1997 as an 'adventure'

By Denis Brulet

HONG KONG (AFP): With two years to go before Hong Kong's handback to China, a high-ranking career public servant like Andrew Leung would seem to be a prime candidate to quit the British colony pronto.

Not so. The 50-year-old deputy commissioner for administration of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, educated at Cambridge and Harvard, is full of confidence in the future of his birthplace after the Union Jack comes down and China's communist red flag goes up on July 1, 1997.

"The reversion to China is a real chance for Hong Kong," he said in an interview. "You can compare it to what happened in the Wild West -- a bit of lawlessness, but a lot of opportunities if you like adventure."

With his well-traveled background, his important responsibilities as a leader of one of the world's biggest municipal police forces, even his crisply-tailored suit, Leung does not come across as the adventurer type.

Born in Hong Kong, he speaks Cantonese, the local Chinese dialect, as well as English, which has always been essential for getting ahead in the colony.

But he has also taken the precaution of learning Mandarin, the official Chinese dialect. He knows French, too, and studied French revolution by reading Montesquieu, translated into Chinese.

He joined Hong Kong's civil service when he was 22, after his university studies in Britain, and has spent his entire career in it, passing through its industry, finance, transport and security branches.

He also spent three years in Brussels, negotiating a multi- fiber agreement with the European Community -- no small responsibility, given the importance of textiles to Hong Kong's overall trade.

Though he now finds himself in a sensitive post within the police force, Leung brushes off jitters about the British leaving, the Chinese coming, individual freedoms and continued prosperity.

"Just look at what's going on in the field of China, and you can see that Hong Kong will remain an indispensable financial center for China," he said in his office at police headquarters.

"It is not a socialist country anymore. It will become more and more liberal. It cannot reverse its economic policy and needs cash to finance its debt," he said.

His credo is simple. Quite apart from the political upset that could yet strike China in the run-up to 1997, especially the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, China needs Hong Kong too much too take risk with it.

"What do you want them to do?" he asked. "Put everybody in prison?"

"Let's not be ridiculous. If the Chinese Communist Party wanted to break Hong Kong, they would have done so in 1967, during the darkest hour of the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards were at the border," he said.

"What's happening today in China is very encouraging. There are healthy signs in China. Politically, Hong Kong is insignificant for the Chinese Communist Party.

Leung's passion for the economic revolution in China, where he travels regularly, seems to suggest that it will be Hong Kong's six million people who will change the lives of China's 1.2 billion -- and not the other way around.

"We have the know-how and the education," he said. "Shanghai may have the computers and the office space, but we, in Hong Kong, have the people."

He admits that his confidence is not entirely shared in hong Kong, where uncertainty is still strong enough to compel about 1,000 people to emigrate every week, mainly to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

"I may be rather exceptional," he said, "a strange mix of West and East."

Those who want to get out before China comes in have already taken steps to do so, he said. "Everybody has taken out insurance," he explained after a moment's thought. "It's normal."

In his own family, one sister is now in Vancouver, Canada. Another is in Arizona. A third is married to a Frenchman. His younger brother works for American Express, and Leung's two teenaged children are in British schools.

His own nationality is listed on his resume as British.

"But don't make any mistake," Leung warned. "My son will spend a year in Beijing before going to Cambridge. That is the future."