City of bad omens.

As every schoolboy would once have known, traditionally the Chinese have believed that a dynasty reigns because it has been vouchsafed divine approval - the Mandate of Heaven. According to this belief, extensive natural or man-made catastrophes demonstrate that the Mandate has been revoked, and that the reigning dynasty will soon fall. Natural catastrophes began in Hong Kong the instant the regime appointed by Beijing to succeed British rule took office in July 1997.

It rained continually for months. Landslides swept away buildings and imperiled lives. The people slipped into dejection under the seemingly endless rain pelting down day after day. The business slump had already begun and was soon to dip - and then plunge - further. But initially it was the weather, not the economy, that depressed the people of the new Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China.

That was not a good start. Neither was it the end.

A few weeks later, Hong Kong was afflicted by a virulent influenza carried by a virus that could leap from its normal habitat in chickens or ducks to human beings. Naturally fearful, the government ordered millions of fowl destroyed. The mass slaughter, which all but impoverished poultry breeders and traders, was not carried out adeptly. Stray dogs and cats gnawed and clawed at black refuse sacks containing dead chickens, as well as some that were not quite dead. Highly efficient under British control, the Hong Kong Civil Service made a mess of that essential execution under Tung Chee-hwa's aegis.

Still another natural disaster struck early in 1998. Hong Kong's inshore fishing had already been curtailed by noisome pollution and by competition from Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean boats. Nonetheless, Hong Kong's trawlers and motorized junks were still finding good catches not too far away. Then came the "red tide", a flood of scarlet algae that poisoned innumerable fish and imperiled the industry. Within two months fifty to sixty people were struck by the virulent enterovirus called Taiwan flu.

A man-made catastrophe, however, was to all but eclipse nature's malign deeds. A new airport some twenty miles away was built at great speed to replace the dangerous and inadequate old airport at the center of the city. Costing more than $20 billion, it is, after Japan's Kansai Airport, the most expensive in the world. Originally scheduled to begin operations in mid-July, it was prematurely commissioned so that President Jiang Zemin could be the first traveler to set down - and thus mark the first anniversary of Hong Kong's acquisition by China. Opened to normal traffic on July 6, it was so spectacularly incompetent that air cargo to and from Hong Kong had to be suspended for more than a week, at a cost of around half a billion U.S. dollars. Even more gravely, given the nearly simultaneous opening of competing new airports nearby in Macao and Guangzhou, the dismal spectacle severely undermined Hong Kong's reputation for brisk efficiency.

What, then, Hong Kong's people asked, of the Mandate of Heaven? What indeed. To see ahead, let us start by looking back.

In the fifth decade of the nineteenth century, Britain took the island called Hong Kong from China at gunpoint. In the last decade of the twentieth century, China took back from Britain, by force majeure if not directly at gunpoint, not only Hong Kong Island but the small Kowloon Peninsula, which had been seized later, and the broad New Territories, which had been leased for ninety-nine years in 1898. In none of these exchanges was the indigenous population asked its view. Nor were its interests seriously considered. In each case, too, the transfer of sovereignty ran counter to the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants.

The few thousand part-time fishermen part-time pirates using the island in 1840 preferred the nominal rule of the Manchu Dynasty in far distant Beijing to the meddling British. In 1898 the tens of thousands in the farming villages of the New Territories were not eager to exchange ineffectual Chinese rule for British intrusiveness. In 1997 the well over six million Chinese living in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong were happy with the highly effective and low taxing British administration that had made Hong Kong prosperous even by the standards of economically buoyant Asia. They also cherished civil order based upon general consent rather than coercion, as well as a degree of intellectual freedom and expression rare in authoritarian Asia. Opinion polls, and the belated introduction of a measure of democracy by the Colony's last British governor, affirmed as much. In 1995 the people of Hong Kong elected legislators sworn to resist communist tyranny. Three years later they humiliated Beijing's candidates in the first legislative election under China's sovereignty, indeed the first free election on mainland Chinese soil since the communists established the People's Republic in 1949.

Most communist leaders would have preferred a Hong Kong that continued to serve their economic interests by providing financial services and large sums of foreign money. But, above all, they wanted a Hong Kong that would not imperil their hold on power through its constant example of a more relaxed, more free, and much happier political entity next door to the mainland they ruled so harshly. Still another imperative impelled Beijing to demand the return of all Hong Kong when the lease on the New Territories expired on June 30, 1997. The sting of the humiliation and depredation inflicted on China by foreign powers from the early nineteenth century onward could only be salved by reclaiming every inch of territory that had once been Chinese. Aside from Hong Kong, minuscule Portuguese Macau was the only other foreign enclave remaining. Since it was effectively under Chinese rule already, formal reversion was less pressing. Taiwan presented a different kind of challenge - already under Chinese rule but not Beijing's suzerainty.

Hong Kong, the very first and the most conspicuous of the territories Britain had stolen from China, had to be reclaimed to expunge the shame of the past. And it had to be reclaimed no later than July 1, 1997, lest it appear that Beijing was truckling to London.

A very senior and very influential British diplomat assured me years ago that Hong Kong would not suffer as a result of the disorder he correctly foresaw in China, but would remain prosperous and happy after it came under Chinese rule. He was wrong. The mood in Hong Kong is now sour and pessimistic.

Such diplomats - and many in the business community - still insist that such dejection is largely the fault of Chris Patten, the last British governor, who was not one of them but a politician. Patten, they say, aroused false expectations by introducing a measure of democracy. But, they contend, the autocratic rule of previous London-appointed governors had nurtured a populace that was contented, docile, and "not interested in politics." If Patten had not interfered, the argument continues, Hong Kong would today still be a happy land. The discontent and political demonstrations that regularly test the authority of the Beijing-appointed government of the SAR would never have arisen.

Besides, this school of thought would add, the depressed state of Hong Kong today is due not to Beijing's rule, but to the fiscal crisis that has shaken all of East Asia from South Korea to Indonesia. Hong Kong's blues are economic, nothing more. That contention, however, is only half of a half-truth.

The Hong Kong economy was depressed even before the Asian downslide. The proprietor of a shop selling linen and embroidered garments replied glumly when I asked how his business was doing, "I haven't made the smallest profit since July 1st '97. Just losses all the way - and getting worse. I can't even cover the rent." A campaign to reduce greatly inflated business rents by 40 percent has been overtaken by events. But he added, "Forty percent reduction wouldn't be enough. I'd still go broke."

The old Pedder Building houses factory outlets and other cut-rate shops. All now display signs offering even greater bargains, which literally translated from the Chinese is "Great Price Cutting." By changing one of the three words, one shop has made its come-on read "Great Bloodletting! Eighty percent oft."

For the beginning of Hong Kong's economic stagnation the fall in tourism is largely to blame. The number of visitors has fallen by more than 50 percent since July 1, 1997, a slump caused by both the change in Hong Kong's political status - as witness the many empty hotel rooms the week of the handover-and by the Asian recession, which is keeping many Asian tourists at home.

But general dejection also reflects a peculiar Hong Kong psychology. Most people still repose greater confidence in Great Britain - now a small, far away, third-rate power entangled with the European Union than they do in their presumed motherland, a colossal resurgent power on their doorstep. A majority of Hong Kong's people are either themselves refugees from People's China or descendants of refugees. During the decades I lived in the Crown Colony I found it hard to discuss China with them. They automatically disbelieved Beijing's every statement and discounted its every achievement. Their fixed conviction: "The communists only know how to lie!"

Manifestly, and however much they look alike, the people of Hong Kong are not only different from their presumed compatriots across the border, but are alienated from China. Once, in Shanghai, I fell into conversation with two men whose features were wholly Chinese, although their clothing, their confident demeanor, their command of English, and their obvious prosperity set them apart. Both were from Hong Kong. I realized after exchanging a few sentences that they were referring to the Shanghailanders as "they" and to the three of us from Hong Kong as "we", regardless of my not being Chinese at all.

In an oddly upside-down way, I recently encountered similar scorn. The common language of Hong Kong is a Chinese dialect called Cantonese. To my shame my Cantonese is poor despite all the time I've spent in Hong Kong. I therefore spoke to a non-English speaking salesman in Mandarin, which is known as putunghua, the common language of all China. He retorted in Cantonese, "Don't talk that language to me. I'm not Chinese. I'm a Hong Kong man!"

The alienation, all but antagonism, between mainlanders and Hong Kong people has been aggravated rather than allayed by the Colony's transformation into an integral part of the People's Republic. Immigration policy is one reason. The border between the New Territories and Guangdong Province was for five decades closely guarded to keep out "illegal immigrants", that is, refugees from China. Yet many slipped across, in part because the heart of the largely British-officered Hong Kong Police was not really in the assignment. Today the border is more closely watched, and much less permeable. Beijing does not want an influx of mainlanders seeking a better living standard and greater freedom in Hong Kong. Above all, Beijing does not want large numbers of mainlanders visiting Hong Kong and returning to compare conditions there with those at home.

Before the transfer, tourists and businessmen from China were readily distinguishable from the locals. Their clothing was shabby and badly cut, and their complexions were rather muddy. They also tended to be uninhibited, released, albeit temporarily, from harsh discipline at home. Even in free, easy, and very rude Hong Kong, the mainlanders were notably uncouth.

They still are. Looking for a particular trinket in one of the many gold shops that line Queens Road Central, I was jostled by twenty or so men and women who - even had they not been wearing plastic tags reading Guangdong Province Tour Group - were obviously mainlanders by their clothes, complexions, and behavior. All could afford the small solid gold objects they were eagerly pricing - and buying. Gold does not change in value as abruptly as fundamental situations can change in unstable China.

The group was shepherded by three older men wearing dark blue, high-buttoned Mao Tse-tung tunics, which are rarely seen even in China nowadays. When I began talking with a young man, one of those shepherds gently shouldered me aside. He was clearly not worried about my learning more about conditions in China; I can go to Guangdong and talk freely with most people any day. Although the authorities there would like to stop such spontaneous conversations, they cannot do so entirely without affecting trade, investment, and tourism, all big money spinners. Rather, it appeared, the man in the Mao suit was anxious to prevent his charges from learning more about Hong Kong. Still, he could not keep them from seeing prosperity unrivaled anywhere in mainland China.

Despite recession, Hong Kong glitters with riches and throbs with commerce compared even with go-ahead Shanghai. But Hong Kong is now suffering a recession that is sliding fast toward a depression. The woes are by no means limited to the merchants and hoteliers who depend on tourist dollars. Everyone is singing the blues, and with good reason. By early August it had become clear that early predictions of economic trouble were too optimistic. Data showed that the economy had shrunk 2.8 percent in the first quarter of 1998, and was estimated to contract a full 3 percent in the second quarter. Release of that data, along with news that Hong Kong's major banks were in much worse shape than anticipated, sent stocks tumbling - which in turn completed the circle of economic gloom.

There are less transient explanations for Hong Kong's troubles as well. Little is manufactured there today. Almost all industry has migrated to China itself, lured by much lower wages and by greater latitude regarding working conditions. The chief money-maker in the SAR is money itself. Investment, insurance, banking, finance, and speculation bring in the big bucks. But employment in finance has fallen some 20 percent recently, and those who hang on to their jobs have been taking swinge-ing salary cuts.

Rents for luxury flats have not yet dropped decisively, but they are sagging. Domestic rents are faltering, instead of rising 20 to 40 percent on each renewal of a lease, as they did only recently. Firms that happily paid $12,000 a month or more for an employee's fiat are now radically reducing such benefits or cutting them off entirely. Former beneficiaries of such largesse are looking for cheaper housing on offshore islands like little Lama, which had been virtually a hippie colony - by staid Hong Kong standards at least.

Overall property values are also falling, particularly commercial property. Hong Kong's formerly buoyant economy floated on inflated property values that allowed low taxation, which in turn attracted investment and the Asian headquarters of foreign firms. Taxes have so far only increased slightly. But the pledge by Tung Chee-hwa, Beijing's appointed chief executive, to build eighty-five thousand new flats for the underprivileged in each of the next three years, however meritorious, will certainly drive down rents and will probably require tax increases.

Good for the less well off if it really happens, the promised expansion of housing will not be good for the economy in general. Property values are already down 30 to 40 percent from their peak, and, to repeat, overvalued property has been the foundation of Hong Kong's prosperity. In order to prevent further steep decline, all sale of government land has now been suspended until March 1999. The government is the sole landowner in Hong Kong, leasing land to companies for extended periods of time, like 99 years, at very high prices. Therefore, high land prices underwrite low taxes, while declining land prices make higher taxes necessary.

All local trade is down for firms, except of course for essentials like food and funerals. Newspaper and magazine advertising has fallen sharply. And so it goes: a long, slow, funereal drumbeat. Optimists contend that the present shakedown will make Hong Kong much more competitive when the general Asian recovery occurs. That recovery is inevitable, though none can say when it will start or how far it will go. It will, of course, help Hong Kong greatly. But it will not heal the territory's fundamental malaise, for non-economic woes beset the government of the Special Administrative Region.

The heart of government in Hong Kong is its old Civil Service. Stripped of all but a few of its British members, it is, first, encumbered with an appointed executive arm that is inexperienced, impractical, and slavishly obedient to Beijing despite the pledge that "Hong Kong people will rule Hong Kong!" Second, it is encumbered with a timid judiciary that has ruled itself out of cases presenting issues that could affront Beijing; the highest court is specifically forbidden to try any case involving politics, which can mean anything Beijing wants it to mean. Third, Hong Kong was encumbered with an appointed legislature that is hardly representative - and is now encumbered with a legislature "elected" under various circumstances that prevent true representation.

Tung Chee-hwa and his sycophants have repeatedly asserted that Hong Kong enjoys real democracy for the first time, because the chief executive is no longer a governor appointed by Britain. He might just as well say, "Hong Kong people aren't interested in politics, only in making money!" That reiterated justification long comforted those Britons who felt a twinge of guilt at the arbitrary, indeed despotic, way Britain ruled the Crown Colony for most of its 155 years. By and large, the virtually absolute British governors were benevolent, but they were still despots.

The lack of interest in politics was true - but chiefly for a small minority of the population, the well-to-do. The rich really didn't - and still don't - are who ruled Hong Kong or how it was ruled, as long as they were free to make money. They were left free, virtually untethered by law, for the Colony practiced almost perfect economic laisser faire - and profited greatly thereby. However, the efficient execution of the vital functions of government, which said government reserved to itself, and the impartial administration of British justice provided by independent courts, were essential to Hong Kong's growth. Within that secure framework the ingenious, hard-working, and risk-taking native Chinese population transformed that "barren rock with hardly a house on it" described by Lord Palmerston in 1840.

All the people were interested in making a good living; the mass of the people was also vitally interested in practical politics. The emerging middle class, the managers, the professionals, the shopkeepers, the artisans, and even the workers had a stake in basic fairness, stability, and lawfulness. It was precisely their vital concern with politics that in 1989 first alarmed Beijing, which in its doctrinaire ignorance had thought the people of Hong Kong little different from the people of China.

Ironically, the event that put Beijing on its guard demonstrated strong sympathy between the people of Hong Kong and the mainlanders whose interest in democratic politics Beijing sought to crush. In 1989 Hong Kong was profoundly moved by the June 4 massacre in Beijing of students and workers campaigning for democracy, and by the persecution of all dissidents, however mild, throughout China. A million men and women gathered in a candle-lit vigil in Hong Kong. Such vigils on a somewhat smaller scale have occurred every year since, including 1998. Hong Kong was until July 1, 1997 a haven for refugee dissidents and provided funds for their movement. Naturally, Beijing is determined to crush that independent spirit.

The people of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong again proved themselves vitally interested in politics in 1995, when the second legislative election in its history took place. Twenty of the sixty seats were to be filled by direct public election, twenty by the governor's direct appointment, and twenty by "functional constituencies", which meant groups demarcated by occupation. That election was a further step toward democracy, not a great leap. Governor Patten, who would have liked a far more democratic election, was constrained by the diplomats' prior agreement with Beijing that only a third of the legislators would be directly elected.

Still, some 35 percent of those eligible came to the polls - and voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party of barrister Martin Lee. He stood for increased democracy and for vigorous resistance to the encroachment on freedom that he foresaw when Beijing took power in July 1997. The Democrats could do nothing about the handover, of course. That was an irreversible fait accompli. But the elections did show Beijing that most of the people did not want Chinese rule.

That election and the legislature it produced were the centerpiece of the democratic innovations introduced by Patten. Those limited changes evoked the vehement protests of the Foreign Office clique dedicated to serene Sino-British relations at any cost. Those protests were echoed by both British and Chinese taipans - the big businessmen who have accumulated hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars. Among the paradoxes of Hong Kong, the rich are for the communists, while the masses definitely are not.

Both the Foreign Office and the taipans are now busily chipping away at Patten's solid reputation in retaliation for his reforms, which they still contend have impeded Hong Kong's chief business - which is, of course, business. Both those groups had wanted a smooth transfer of sovereignty because they believed their own interests were best served by truckling to Beijing. Neither the diplomats nor the taipans could imagine that Beijing's suzerainty would signal an economic decline. They believed - or professed to believe - that the mass of Hong Kong's people would be just as well - if not better - off under Chinese rule. Yet from the very beginning the new regime was dogged by unforeseen problems that have severely impeded both general economic development and corporate profits.

The first was simply a problem of credibility. Even before the takeover, the government-to-be had declared the 1995 legislative election invalid and had appointed its own legislature in waiting. An elaborate and intricate process handpicked committees to select committees to choose committees that finally elected the legislators. That complicated mummery convinced no one that the legislature that took its seats on July 1, 1997 reflected the popular will. No more did the layers of committees that selected Tung Chee-hwa as chief executive carry conviction. Everyone knew that Tung had been chosen by President Jiang Zemin, who confirmed his choice by ostentatiously shaking hands with Tung under the television lenses long before the charade of selection by committee began. Tung was selected because he would do Beijing's bidding without question. He was, after all, indebted to Beijing. Having mismanaged his father's shipping fleet into near bankruptcy, he had survived by borrowing some $250 million through friends of the regime.

Nor did the procedure for electing a new legislature in May 1998 enhance the regime's democratic credibility. There were still sixty seats, and again only twenty were filled by popular election. Of the rest twenty were appointed directly, as under Patten's reforms, because the Sino-British agreement provided for such a procedure. Twenty were again chosen by "functional constituencies", associations of, say, gold traders, doctors, bankers, lawyers, and the like. So too had they been under Patten, because the Basic Law drafted by Beijing and the Foreign Office so provided. This echo of Benito Mussolini's corporate state was either not recognized as such or else failed to disturb the architects of the new Hong Kong, which was to be ruled by democracy Beijing style - essentially a more efficient and more invasive authoritarianism than Mussolini's fascism.

Nonetheless, the first legislative election after the handover was a stunning repudiation of Tung Chee-hwa's reign. In torrents of rain and with winds of near typhoon violence, a remarkable 53 percent of the general electorate turned out to choose the twenty legislators representing the general public. They returned fifteen candidates from Martin Lee's Democratic Party and its close allies. The remaining five came from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, a mildly leftist, old-line labor party that does not truckle to Beijing. Although the voting pattern had been rigged to favor pro-Beijing candidates, not a single one was elected by the general public. In the functional constituencies, five more Democrats were chosen, although the number eligible to vote by occupation had been reduced from some 1.15 million to less than 150,000.

It was a smashing victory for the advocates of democracy and independence, a stinging repudiation of Tung and his puppet-masters in Beijing. In immediate practical terms it was something less. A majority of the sixty legislators will vote as Beijing directs, for the twenty appointed directly and the functional constituencies, largely the realm of big business, returned some fifteen pro-Beijing candidates. Martin Lee is now all but literally the leader of the opposition in communist China, since nowhere else in the sprawling nation is any opposition party tolerated. Of course, the SAR will continue to run as Beijing directs. But a spark of democracy will glow in Hong Kong until either Beijing stamps it out or until the Chinese capital itself changes even more radically than it is changing at the moment.

In the year 2002 a committee of eight hundred is to select the next chief executive, either Tung Chee-hwa or another equally subservient to Beijing. In 2007 the successive chief executive is supposed to be popularly elected, although Tung has already said he feels that may be too soon. He has also decried Hong Kong's excessive Westernization and restricted teaching in English, a measure originally planned by the outgoing colonial administration to facilitate the Sinicization of Hong Kong. Yet switching to Cantonese as the language of instruction is downright silly. Not only will graduates of the newly restricted schools not have mastered the international language, English, but they won't even be adept in Mandarin, China's common national language.

The press, radio, and television are already constrained, mostly the result of the fears of reporters and editors under pressure from proprietors. Such self-censorship is probably more effective that outright censorship, since it knows no bounds. Direct censorship has not been imposed, but the Chinese-language media are harassed. The frankly oppositionist Apple Daily has been charged with violations of employment laws and other non-journalistic offenses. The English-language press, the barometer by which most outside observers assess Hong Kong's political weather, is still reasonably free of interference. But only a few regularly read the English press and they are predominantly foreigners who are mostly transients and thus don't really matter. But Radio Television Hong Kong, an editorially autonomous public entity rather like the BBC which broadcasts in English and Cantonese, has been fiercely attacked for failing to present government policy "positively." Hong Kong's new regime really cannot see the difference between a quasi-independent broadcasting service financed by the government and a wholly government-controlled service - no more than can Beijing.

Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader who died a few months before the handover he had enforced, made several promises to Hong Kong to sweeten the pill. He did so in part to save British face by fostering the illusion that London had successfully negotiated modifications of Beijing's original conditions, for the benefit of the people of Hong Kong. But his chief purpose was to reassure the people so that they would, as he advised, "set their hearts at ease." Deng did not want a frightened or agitated populace that would reduce a prosperous SAR's ability to spin money for the People's Republic.

Despite Deng's reassurances, tens of thousands of the emerging middle class fled each year from 1984 onwards. More would have left had they been able. They were quite right to doubt Deng's promises.

The paramount leader had guaranteed that Hong Kong's social and economic system would not change for at least fifty years after the handover. He had encapsulated his guarantees in a simple formula: One country, two systems. However, Tung Chee-hwa recently declared that whenever the two principles clashed, one country took absolute precedence over two systems. The principles clashed repeatedly during the first year of Tung's term. He further assured his own followers that dissenting voices on Radio Television Hong Kong would be silenced - all in good time. So would public demonstrations protesting government actions.

Such demonstrations, reasonably free at the beginning, are now much restricted. Four men have been convicted for demonstrating, two of them for defacing the scarlet flag of the People's Republic of China. Neither defacing the Union Jack nor public protest was an offense under "oppressive colonial rule." Beyond doubt, Beijing is gradually reducing Hong Kong to authoritarian servitude under cover of apparently moderate policies. We should have expected nothing else. Hong Kong cannot be allowed to become a threat to Beijing's absolutist rule of China by its example of a happier people under a more lenient government. But absolutism will be enforced "slowly, slowly", as Tung observed of the ultimate suppression of the media, electoral rights, and all freedom of expression.

Foreign influence has slowed that inexorable process - and could slow it further. Paramount is American influence, since President Jiang Zemin needs the public approval of the Clinton administration to enhance his personal prestige. American goodwill is also vital to China's industrial progress. But such influence can only slow the process. It cannot stop the smothering of the SAR's transient freedoms and residual prosperity. It cannot stop corruption either.

Tung's administration has been further marred by a general rise in crime, as well as public and private corruption. To be fair, armed robbery and bribery were already increasing under Patten's administration. Both were fueled then, as they are now, by the virtual immunity from prosecution of Beijing-owned corporations and by the alliance between the criminal secret societies of Hong Kong - the so-called Triads - and the officers of the People's Liberation Army in the nearby city of Guangzhou (the old Canton). The military have, among other transactions, sent thugs from Canton to Hong Kong to carry out crimes the Triads wished to subcontract.

Crime with roots in China is evidently widespread. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), founded under the British to fight corruption originally in the police force, refuses to discuss cross-border issues. But then, the commission refuses to discuss any matter regarding its crusade, preferring instead to issue self-congratulatory press releases. Nonetheless, the ICAC is now much larger than it was several decades earlier - and it is still growing. There is self-evidently a need to fight growing corruption.

The ICAC's reticence may also be due to the fear the servants of the new regime feel regarding any revelation of any sensitive matter. And many matters are now sensitive that were not so under even the most discreet British governor. It is also whispered among those in the know that the Civil Service itself has now been corrupted, encouraged by the example of totally corrupt Chinese officialdom. Yet those who talk of such bribery may only believe they are in the know. Nonetheless, the fact that they believe and repeat such rumors is in itself significant. To say the least, the Beijing-appointed regime and its servants are not well regarded.

In China itself, the absolute authority of the Communist Party center is being continually undermined by the personal economic interests and the assertiveness of both officials and entrepreneurs in the provinces amid continuing economic liberalization. And, of course, Hong Kong money and expertise are vital to China's continuing economic development. Martin Lee of the Democratic Party therefore avows long-term optimism, perhaps to counter unavoidable short-term pessimism regarding the future of Hong Kong. He believes the changes already effected on the mainland by Hong Kong's influence will grow greater and will in time make the rulers of China less tyrannical.

He could be right. No one can deny the sweeping changes occurring in China, or the daunting dilemma its rulers face. As already noted, if they are to remain in power, they must deliver the material goods. Whipped up patriotism and the artificial idealism of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism are wasting assets, and even general suppression of all freedoms and the threat of "reform through labor" - or still harsher punishment like the constant drum fire of executions for crimes that are often political - can no longer keep the masses in line. Civilian officials as well as army officers are now members, even leaders, of extra-legal secret societies, and every new measure of economic liberalization effectively undermines the authority of the central leadership. Beijing is extending such relaxation while simultaneously intensifying ideology-based civil discipline. Such a self-contradictory policy simply will not work for long.

Nonetheless, the prospect of China's changing so radically as to affect its rule of Hong Kong benignly is still far distant. Rather, and paradoxically, the need to exercise autocratic control over the SAR may well grow as Beijing tries in vain to beat out the wildfires of domestic discontent. Beside China, Hong Kong is smaller than a mouse beside an elephant. But ideas and values have proved themselves more powerful than empires in the past. Presumably a mouse could in time induce an elephant to eat cheese if it were not trampled in the interim. But how long would it take?

While we wait to find out, the Communist Party closes its hand ever tighter on the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. Relentlessly, albeit gradually, the people are being deprived of the opportunity, the objective education, and, above all, the dignity and freedom they once enjoyed. Such an erosion of human rights is reason enough to deplore the present trend and to fear for Hong Kong's future.

Robert Elegant, who speaks and reads Mandarin, has written extensively on China in novels and nonfiction for almost five decades. He lived in Hong Kong for twenty years.