HONG KONG's future leader said yesterday China would finance his government in waiting before the colony's handover to Chinese rule on July 1st.
"As for the funding question of the team designate and the provisional legislature from mid December to the end of June, the central government has expressed its support for all financial expenditure," Mr Tung Chee hwa said in Beijing after his first working level talks with Chinese officials.
The post colonial Hong Kong government will provide its own funding after the handover when it starts collecting tax.
The former shipping magnate met the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr Qian Qichen, and Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office director, Mr Lu Ping, during his visit to Beijing.
Mr Tung (59), chosen as Hong Kong's post colonial leader on December 11th by a China controlled 400 strong committee, said he had also raised the issue of the legal status of the provisional legislature with Chinese legislators.
"There are areas that the National People's Congress needs to endorse which, I think, can be done," Mr Tung said.
The congress would study the legality of the interim assembly, due to hold its first meeting in China's southern city of Shenzhen by the end of January, he added.
Mr Tung had said he might ask the congress to pass a law endorsing the interim assembly, which will replace Hong Kong's current elected chamber, but he did not say whether he had, made the request during the visit.
Hong Kong will revert to China in 176 days time, ending more than a century and a half of colonial rule.
China, angered by the democratic reforms introduced by the Governor, Mr Chris Patten, in the twilight of British rule, set up the interim chamber to reverse the reforms after the handover. Britain and Hong Kong's pro democracy movement say the interim chamber violates a 1984 SinoBritish agreement on the return of the territory.
Mr Tung also gave fresh assurances to senior Hong Kong government officials that he would keep most of them in his administration according to their abilities.
Hong Kong's popular Chief Secretary, Ms Anson Chan, had said she accepted Tung's invitation to remain in her post as the number two official in the territory's government.