HOLDING ONTO DEMOCRACY IN HONG KONG : APPROACHING TURNOVER TO CHINA ADDS VOLUME TO ACTIVISTS' VOICES.

Byline: Jennifer Lin Knight-Ridder Tribune News Service

Kicking and screaming, the most outspoken pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong was dragged away by police Wednesday.

Emily Lau was protesting the first step in the creation of the new local government that will take office once this British colony reverts to Chinese rule July 1, 1997.

``It seems the future administration of Hong Kong will be much more dictatorial, much less liberal, than the current colonial regime,'' Lau told a radio reporter before her arrest.

What triggered Wednesday's protest was the naming of shipping magnate Tung Chee-hwa as the territory's future chief executive. The activists' complaint is that Tung was picked not by popular vote but by a 400-member selection committee dominated by people sympathetic to Beijing.

Lau, 44, was the best-known of the protesters. A chic, U.S.-educated journalist-turned-legislator, she is Hong Kong's mouth that roars. And once the Chinese take over, her future - like that of all pro-democracy activists - is far from certain.

``Emily is so outspoken and frank. She's just not compromising, (so) one worries,'' said Robin Munroe, the Hong Kong director of Human Rights Watch/Asia.

``She's like a red rag before a bull with the Chinese government.''

Political dissent has been all but wiped out in China, but in Hong Kong it burns with a vengeance. For a long time, the rap on Hong Kong was that its people were far more interested in moneymaking than politics. But the bloody 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square shook many people out of their complacency.

Now, with the hand-over due in less than seven months, a loud core of activists is fighting to guard democracy and personal freedoms.

The activists are not well known outside Hong Kong. But in the years ahead, they could find themselves entangled in the same struggle against Chinese authorities as the Tiananmen generation.

The new local government that Tung will head is unlikely to provide much of a buffer between the activists and their future Chinese rulers. Tung, a multimillionaire with strong links to both the Communists in Beijing and his fellow tycoons in Hong Kong, believes in consensus, not conflict. It's better for business.

He has already criticized Lau's Democratic Party for being too confrontational. That attitude is what worries her.

``No one is talking too much about human rights or freedom of expression'' in the post-turnover era, Lau said in a recent interview. ``They're talking about `obligations,' and that sounds ominous to me.''

Come next July, Szeto Wah is staying put. The rumpled, 65-year-old legislator is afraid that if he sets foot outside Hong Kong, the Chinese government won't let him back in.

Like Emily Lau, Szeto is a pro-democracy activist, a political gadfly whom Chinese authorities would just as soon see fly away.

Also like Lau, Szeto will be out of a job once the Chinese take over.

Both won their seats in Hong Kong's Legislative Council, better known as Legco, by landslide votes last year. But China, saying that Britain held the election only to sabotage China's takeover, has announced plans to scrap the Legco on July 1 and replace it with a ``provisional legislature.''

That legislature will be chosen sometime this month by the same 400 business people, pro-China politicians and community leaders who chose Tung. In comparison, nearly 1 million people voted in the 1995 election.

More than half the current Legco, as well as dozens of other hopefuls are applying for seats on the provisional legislature. Lau and Szeto, who consider the replacement body illegal, are not among them.

But even if he wanted a seat, Szeto (pronounced SAY-toe) would have no chance of getting one.

After the Tiananmen protests, Beijing branded Szeto a ``persona non grata.'' His offense: forming an alliance in Hong Kong that advocates an end to one-party rule in China. Although Szeto denies it, the Chinese government also suspects that the alliance has helped dissidents inside China to flee to safe havens via Hong Kong.

The Chinese government already has accused Szeto of being ``subversive.'' Once it takes over Hong Kong, he knows all too well how it deals with people like him.

``I've already prepared myself for three scenarios,'' said Szeto, citing the fates of well-known Chinese dissidents.

First, he said, is the Han Dongfang scenario. A mainland labor activist, Han was banned from returning to China after an extended stay in the United States.

Next is the Ding Zilin model. Ding's son was a student killed during the 1989 democracy protests. She has rallied the families of other victims and is paying for her activism: Security police keep her under constant surveillance.

Last and worst, there is Wei Jingsheng, perhaps the best-known democracy advocate inside China. Wei is serving a 14-year prison sentence.

Sitting in a windowless office at the Professional Teachers' Union, the bookish Szeto lays out his grim options with an air of both resignation and defiance. His stubbornness is like a dare. He will not back down. This is, after all, the man who led a citywide strike in 1973 that led to the creation of the teachers union, now 62,000 members strong.

``No one wants to go to prison,'' Szeto said, ``but in this situation you cannot be afraid.''

The prospect of prison has crossed Lau's mind, too.

Soon after she first became a legislator, a former governor of Hong Kong took her aside to make a promise. When the Chinese locked her up, he said, he'd bring her cigarettes in prison so she could bribe the guards.

He wasn't joking, Lau recounted.

Lau is blunt, headstrong and, more than anything else, angry.

She upbraids the British government for abandoning the people of Hong Kong. She castigates Beijing for interfering. And she chides the people of Hong Kong for their apathy.

``They think one cannot counter the Communists, but even if we cannot we should do something to influence things instead of just sitting there passively,'' Lau said.

Lau, a graduate of the University of Southern California who worked as a magazine and television reporter before turning to politics, spends her days and nights inside the formal Legco building.

She runs in high gear, trying, as she puts it, ``to get international attention for Hong Kong.'' Last week, she met with theologians from Minnesota, students from Australia, reporters from all over the world. She just returned from Germany and Switzerland and is planning a trip in March that will take her from Toronto to Washington, and Charlotte, N.C.

Lau has a British passport and could leave Hong Kong permanently if she chose. But, though she is uneasy about the future, she has chosen to stay in Hong Kong with her husband, find a new job and carry on.

``I feel very worried and concerned, but many Hong Kong people feel overwhelmed with feelings of resignation,'' Lau said. ``They say, `All right, we have no say, let's just see how it goes.' They're saying, `It's no use.' ''