HONG KONG BRACES FOR SWITCH.

Byline: The New York Times

Less than a year from now, at precisely midnight on June 30, 1997, Hong Kong will look up in the night sky at a quintessential Chinese contribution to technology. Above the harbor, the most spectacular display of fireworks this territory has ever seen will burst against the sky, glinting off skyscrapers, the swiftly flowing harbor waters, illuminating the faces of hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers.

On that night, as the clock strikes the new day of July 1, the British Union Jack will slither down a flagstaff, and in its place will be a crimson banner marked by five yellow stars, as Hong Kong becomes a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. Hong Kong's last governor, Chris Patten, will board the royal yacht Britannia and sail into the South China Sea.

It will be a day of happiness for many - the colony of Hong Kong, wrested from China in 1842 by imperial British forces after the first Opium War, returns to China. It will be a day of apprehension for others - China's respect for the law and human rights is regarded with widespread suspicion.

But apart from the changing of flags, the departure of the governor and the promise of aerial pyrotechnics, virtually nothing has yet been planned for midnight June 30 and the next day. Not surprisingly, the snag in preparations is bound up in the tensions between Britain and China. A visit earlier this year to London by the Chinese foreign minister, Qian Qichen, concluded with an agreement to create a joint body to plan for the celebrations of that day. Hong Kong is still waiting.

``1997 is obviously something special, a unique piece of history,'' said Peter Randall, a spoksman for the Hong Kong Tourist Association. ``There will be a lot of people who will want to be here on that day. It will be people who have some special connection with Hong Kong.''

At the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong's grandest old hotel, plans for the great day have been fixed and rates for a special hand-over package set.

The hotel, said spokeswoman Sarah Kent, will offer a six-day package - June 28 through July 3, with rates ranging from $3,765 to $10,649, depending on room size and view.

There is little doubt that the Mandarin, and every other room in Hong Kong, will be filled. Hong Kong, a city with little reverence for the past and a present that shifts daily, will not be the territory it is today when China resumes sovereignty. Physically, the physiognomy of the city is being remolded, its harbor shrunk by acres and acres of new land reclaimed from the harbor. There will be new skyscrapers, a new convention center, new highways and tunnels. And so it is still difficult to know where celebrations will occur, and even who will take part.

China's senior but grievously ailing leader, Deng Xiaoping, has promised to visit Hong Kong at the hand-over, but questions about his health make such promises doubtful. No one yet knows who will replace Patten as the territory's new chief executive, but it is expected to be a Hong Kong Chinese.

Still, there will be celebratory parties and events across the territory, promises Randall. And because the change of sovereignty will take place in the heart of the typhoon season, it is unclear whether the official event will occur at Statue Square, the traditional heart of Hong Kong, or in the new Convention Center now rising skeletonlike from the waters of Hong Kong harbor.

In any case, it will be a day that many will wish to witness. Randall of the tourist association, for one, has no intention of missing it, come what may. ``I vowed that I would always get back here,'' he said, voicing the sentiments of many people with memories of the Colony. ``I shall be here.''

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Photo

Photo: Life in cosmopolitan Hong Kong will change when itsgovernment is turned over to communist China in 1997.

Luaine Lee/Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service