Cheung Tze-keung was executed outside Guangzhou on 5 December 1998.

Execution Stirs Hong Kong
-By RONE TEMPEST

Even before mainland Chinese authorities executed Cheung Tze-keung yesterday, his case had stirred a public debate among lawyers and judicial authorities in Hong Kong.

On 12 November, a court in mainland Guangzhou sentenced Cheung ("The Big Spender") and four accomplices to execution for the kidnapping of two Hong Kong tycoons. The victims were released after huge ransoms were paid.

Cheung's appeal was denied early yesterday and he was executed a short time later.

Capital punishment is routine in China which, last year, according to Amnesty International, executed 1876 people - more than the rest of the world combined.

Hong Kong has no death sentence so the report that "Big Spender" Cheung was dead has reverberated most loudly here.

Ms. Margaret Ng, a respected barrister who represents the legal profession in the Hong Kong Legislative Council, argues that the case amounts to improper mainland interference in the territory - which, under the Basic Law agreement that governed its transfer from Britain to China, is supposed to enjoy autonomy in all matters not involving national defence and foreign affairs until 2047.

"A crime - that of kidnapping certain Hong Kong tycoons - allegedly committed in Hong Kong by some Hong Kong residents (was) tried in the Guangzhou court," Ms Ng said. "Is it surprising that Hong Kong people are alarmed?"

But, as details of the case surface in Chinese court documents, indications are that some of Hong Kong's prominent citizens may have helped steer the case into the harsher and more secretive mainland court system.

This raises the question, posed by Hong Kong journalist Stephen Vines, of how deeply committed certain powerful members of the Hong Kong business elite are to the civil society and rule of law they inherited from the British.