One last thing before the long weekend: sometimes it's best to know when to shut up.

From Reuters (no link yet):

HONG KONG, April 8 (Reuters) - Beijing said on Thursday it would not shy away from tinkering yet again with Hong Kong's constitution, defying the widespread outrage it sparked this week after it revised electoral laws in the city.

"We have this power (to interpret Hong Kong's Basic Law constitution)...that's why we can't promise never to interpret the Basic Law in the future," Qiao Xiaoyang, a senior member of China's parliament, told a public forum in Hong Kong.

"If the National People's Congress (China's parliament) interpets the law again, we hope you'll all take it easy."

Qiao heads a team of Chinese officials visiting Hong Kong to try to placate the territory after the Chinese parliament revised clauses in the Basic Law giving Beijing full control over how and when the city can choose its leaders and lawmakers.

While the move is legal, it has provoked an outcry from legal circles, rights groups and ordinary people, who say it erodes the high degree of autonomy China promised Hong Kong when it resumed control of the British colony in 1997.

Angry with the local Beijing-backed government, many Hong Kong people have been agitating for full direct elections from as soon as 2007, a possibility allowed under the Basic Law. But the review means this prospect is more remote than ever.

Beijing, which already has the power to veto any political reform, now has the added power to decide if changes are even needed, meaning it can delay any change for as long as it likes.

China's worries are simple. It fears full democracy would yield a leader in the city who challenges the authority of the central leaderhip. The communist government also fears full democracy in Hong Kong could spread to the mainland, undermining its ability to govern the world's most populous nation.

It is also afraid that democratic aspirations would fester and grow into demands for independence for Hong Kong, giving Beijing the same sort of headache it faces in Taiwan.