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The following is issued on behalf of the Judiciary:

The Hon Chief Justice Mr Andrew Kwok-nang Li will lead a Judiciary delegation to visit Beijing from September 19 to 22 at the invitation of the Supreme People's Court.

Other judges in the delegation are: Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal the Hon Mr Justice Chan, Chief Judge of the High Court the Hon Mr Justice Ma, Judges of the Court of First Instance of the High Court the Hon Mr Justice Pang and the Hon Madam Justice Chu, Chief District Judge HH Judge Fung and Chief Magistrate Mr Patrick Li.

"We are honoured to receive the kind invitation from President Xiao Yang of the Supreme People's Court. We believe that continued professional exchanges between Mainland and Hong Kong judges are mutually beneficial," said the Chief Justice today (September 17).

"We will take this opportunity to learn more about the latest developments in the Mainland judicial and legal systems and we will be happy to share our experience in the administration of justice in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region," he said.

There have been continuous professional exchanges between the Mainland and the Hong Kong Judiciary in the past few years.

In February, 1998, the Chief Justice and Mr Justice Chan, the then Chief Judge of the High Court, paid their first official visit to the Supreme People's Court. In September, 1999, the Chief Justice and Mr Justice Chan paid an official visit to the Higher People's Court in Guangdong. In March, 2001, the Chief Justice led a delegation of judges to attend a seminar on Intellectual Property Law organised by the Higher People's Court in Guangdong. And in April, 2002, when visiting the Law School of Tsinghua University, the Chief Justice and other judges met President Xiao and his colleagues.

Since the launching of training programmes for Hong Kong Judges at the Tsinghua University in 1999, more than 70 bilingual judges and more than 50 monolingual judges of various levels of court had paid visits to courts on the Mainland as part of such programmes.

During the same period, the Hong Kong Judiciary had received visiting delegations from various Mainland courts. Since the handover in 1997 until now, the Judiciary has received 53 visiting delegations involving more than 750 judges and representatives from People's Courts and judges' associations in different provinces and cities.

Ends/Friday, September 17, 2004

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