It's always worrying when few important players worry about a crunching tackle into the game plan underlying 'One Country, Two Systems'.

Yet in the early months of 2004, only seven years after the 1997 handover, evidence accumulates that some influential parts of Hong Kong see Mr Deng's blueprint is either a dead notion or a dying one. This includes the PLA. Or perhaps some see it is an ill-conceived idea. Certainly it seems that 'One Country, Two Systems' can be fairly widely interpreted game plan. 

Yes it is right that China's army is in Hong Kong because they help to cover one of two areas where Beijing has a legal responsibility: Hong Kong's defence and foreign policy. Inside Hong Kong there's a Chinese Foreign Ministry office and there's a PLA garrison and that's the way it should be. But handling the vibrant threat from Philippines fishing boats infringing Hong Kong waters or whatever other military threats Hong Kong faces stops at the basic execution phase. The PLA do not have a right to meddle in larger Hong Kong's politics. That's Hong Kong's responsibility and goes to the heart of 'One Country, Two Systems' and to the heart of the Basic Law.

Yet somebody seems to have forgotten the plan either in the PLA garrison or in the Communist Party that gives orders to Hong Kong's standing garrison. In the summer of 2004 the PLA garrison in Hong Kong conducted their first public parade in the former British territory. Perhaps this is not automatically a problem. Friendly community relations are important to peacetime soldiering and all the more so given the PLA connection with Tiananmen Square in 1989.

But it's not right when the PLA start timing meet-and-greet events to influence Hong Kong politics. This particular PLA parade occurred on August 1, 2004 and that's significant. Yes the publicly-quoted reason was the 77th birthday of the PLA. Nobody is seriously disagreeing with that. The People's Army officially appeared on August 1, 1927 which was a couple of years after the death of Dr Sun Yat-sen and a couple of decades before the Communist victory over the nationalists. This may explain why 27,000 spectators attended the birthday party, officially anyway though Hong Kong police estimates about crowd numbers must be considered inaccurate and the real figure was probably less. Unfortunately goosesteps were included but tactfully absent were the Russian-designed tanks used to crush demonstrators at Tiananmen in 1989. 

Marks the end of the 'invisible army' 
Virtually everyone has noted that the PLA were visually absent from Hong Kong after the 1997 handover. Two lone sentries at the entrance of the former HMS Tamar in Central and the occasional military jeep on the roads were one of the few visible signs. Keeping the PLA out of sight was one of Jiang Ze-min's clever strategies for ensuring capitalist Hong Kong smoothly merged with communist China after 1997. To their credit the PLA have executed superbly the order to stay low.

But after seven-plus years Chinese leaders have subtly or perhaps less than subtly shifted some goal posts.

In May 2004 an eight-ship flotilla flew the Communist flag in Hong Kong. The ship visit included an open day and a very visual arrival and departure route up the middle of Victoria harbour. A month later during July 2004 the PLA held an open day on Hong Kong island at the old British garrison and prison in Stanley. It was attended by only 15,000 Hong Kongers. This may be a small number but the gesture itself was a none-too-subtle attempt to draw crowds away from the pro-democracy march on the same day. And then there was the PLA parade in August 2004. 

So there are not one but three PLA occasions that in combination look like they might be designed to influence parts of Hong Kong. First a sizable flotilla imposes itself on Hong Kong harbour, then the army imposes itself in an open day on Hong Kong island, and third there there is a full military parade. All within three months of each other? And all unprecendeted since 1997?  

The PLA, by the way, held only a dozen 'specialist' parades between 1949 and 2004. That's an interesting message in itself. Clearly the People's Army doesn't display itself much to the people. But it gets more curious when Hong Kong is concerned. All of these signature moments have happened on National Day (October 1) and all have been at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. None of them have occurred on the PLA's birthday (August 1) and none outside Beijing.

So why does Hong Kong suddenly get all the goodies in the summer of 2004? The answer seems to lie in the diaries. Were the PLA in Hong Kong to conduct either a parade or open day on National Day 2004, which by precedence should have been the logical timing, that would fall after the September 2004 elections in Hong Kong. And that would have meant the PLA lost the chance to influence the electorate.

Lieutenant-General Wang Ji-tang, the PLA commander, was perhaps unintentionally revealing. 'All troops of the Hong Kong garrison are showing our immense power and determination to defend Hong Kong's prosperity and stability' (legal)... We will, as in the past, actively support the law-abiding governance of the government led by Mr Tung Chee-hwa.'' (nearly not legal)

In fact he should have said, or being legally minded he could only have said, that the PLA will support the government which Hong Kong people chose for themselves. Remember? Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong?