As speculation mounts over who will be selected as the first Chief Executive of the Special Administrative Region, the question of how much clout the person will actually wield has led local China watchers to ponder who holds the real power in Hong Kong. All signs point to the secretive Chinese Communist Party's Hong Kong and Macau Work Committee. Evidence of the committee's activities is scarce, and no wonder: the Communist Party is outlawed in the British colony and therefore does not officially exist. Yet it is widely known that the party has an underground organization in Hong Kong, with as many as 10,000 local members. Its principal aims are to mobilize public support for Beijing's post-1997 policies in the territory and to identify candidates to serve in the first Special Administrative Region government.

No one, though, really knows what role the Communist Party will play in Hong Kong's future. The specter of a parallel authority lurking just beneath Hong Kong's neon-and-glass exterior frightens many. Yet analysts argue that without strong party connections, Hong Kong could be a mendicant in Beijing's halls of power.

The Work Committee was set up in 1982, when talks got under way between Britain and China over Hong Kong's future. The panel's primary goal, says John Burns, a University of Hong Kong political scientist, was "to carry out upper-level united-front work" designed to win over the business community, the news media, schoolteachers, young people and civil servants. Its leader is believed to be Zhou Nan, a member of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee who serves as director of the New China News Agency, or Xinhua, China's de facto embassy in Hong Kong. Judging from the collaboration the Work Committee has fostered within the business community and the self-censorship it has encouraged within the media, Zhou has done his job well. Operating through a network of more than 10,000 grass-roots organizations and the giant Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, the Work Committee has identified future leaders, placed them on important civic bodies, and mobilized support for pro-Beijing candidates in local elections. Marvels a Hong Kong civil servant: "You cannot compete with the Chinese Communist Party for organization."

The notion of an active local Communist Party-in-waiting is not freely discussed in Hong Kong, although scholars and politicians think it should be. "If we look at the political structure after 1997, there may be a Hong Kong party secretary, whose relationship with the Chief Executive would be crucial and would directly affect the degree of autonomy which Hong Kong enjoys," says Sonny Lo Shiu Hing, a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Lo says he would be more distressed at the prospect of a party hierarchy in Hong Kong if it weren't for the "internal conflicts and political in-fighting" that plague pro-China groups. As long as they continue to quarrel, Lo figures, Hong Kong's beleaguered democrats should be able to survive by exploiting the fissures.

Despite China's power and the funds it will continue to lavish on pro-Beijing forces, the Communist Party is still repugnant to most people in Hong Kong. "It's not easy to ask someone to become a Communist in Hong Kong today," muses Lee Yee, editor in chief of the Chinese-language magazine The Nineties. "Before 1949 many idealists became Communists, but not now." Indeed, the party hierarchy has still not recovered from the 1990 defection to the U.S. of Zhou Nan's predecessor at Xinhua, Xu Jiatun, after he sided with the pro-democracy forces at Tiananmen Square. Another blow to pro-China forces was the loss in last year's Legislative Council elections of what had promised to be a sure seat representing the 20,000-member work force at the state-controlled Bank of China, Hong Kong's wealthiest. "They asked their own employees to vote for their candidate, but half of them refused," observes Lee.

What Beijing cannot accomplish in Hong Kong through electoral politics it may be able to achieve by appealing to the territory's self-interest. On the mainland, political connections are everything, and they begin and end inside the Communist Party. To obtain their fair share of patronage from the central government, most Chinese provinces and autonomous regions rely on favorite sons on the party Central Committee or the Politburo. By contrast, none of the half-dozen Hong Kong people mentioned as Chief Executive material are known to be party members. "They are mere petitioners who must go cap in hand to Beijing," says Burns. "That is not a good position for Hong Kong to be in." But then, no leader with bona fide Communist credentials could gain the confidence of Hong Kong's people. So for their benefit, the power behind the screen may have to remain both powerful and behind the screen.