BEIJING, March 2 (Reuters) - China's annual session of parliament next week is likely to avoid attacks on the Falun Gong movement's presence in Hong Kong which might add to worries that the territory's autonomy was at risk, analysts said on Friday.
Few doubt Beijing's all-out campaign against the spiritual movement it outlawed as an "evil cult" will pervade the two-week session of the National People's Congress which opens on Monday.
But, despite a series of comments from Beijing leaders that Falun Gong was using Hong Kong, the former British colony handed back to China in 1997, as a platform to "point its spears" at the Communist Party, it was unlikely to involve Hong Kong, they said.
Beijing, riled by an international Falun Gong meeting in Kong Kong earlier this year, is aware that letting mainland lawmakers loose on Falun Gong in Hong Kong -- where the movement is legal -- would be counterproductive, they said.
Political analyst Lau Siu-kai at the Chinese University in Hong Kong said public condemnation of the Falun Gong in Hong Kong would be most unlikely.
Beijing had plenty of private channels to put pressure on Hong Kong's China-anointed leader Tung Chee-hwa to close in on the Falun Gong, he said.
"Why would Beijing need the NPC? It can do it behind the scenes," Lau said.
HONG KONG DELEGATES WARY
Hong Kong will be represented at the NPC by 36 deputies handpicked by Beijing and they, too, were unlikely to raise the subject of Falun Gong's presence in the territory, Lau said.
"From what I see, the central government does not want Hong Kong NPC delegates to touch on Hong Kong's internal matters and especially not to pressure the Hong Kong government," he said.
"If they discuss Hong Kong's Falun Gong, it will be perceived as an invitation to the central government to pressure the Hong Kong government to act. That would trigger criticism that Beijing is interfering in Hong Kong's internal affairs."
Under the deal with Britain that returned the territory to Chinese sovereignty, Beijing promised Hong Kong "a high degree of autonomy" for 50 years that would allow it to maintain its freewheeling capitalist ways.
Beijing has been under close scrutiny for any hint of a breach of that promise and its pursuit of the campaign against Falun Gong into Hong Kong raised many eyebrows.
Hong Kong democrats grew alarmed when Tung seemed to toe Beijing's line this year by describing Falun Gong as "bearing more or less traits of an evil cult" and pledged to monitor its activities in Hong Kong closely.
On Thursday, Hong Kong security chief Regina Ip called it a "heretical" organisation that encouraged superstition.
Such comments sharpen fears of greater Hong Kong action against Falun Gong ahead of a visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin in May to open an economic forum there.
22:44 03-01-01
Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.