Hong Kong gone.

WITH LESS THAN a decade to go before the sun finally sets on the British Empire with the surrender of Hong Kong, Her Majesty's representatives here in the Crown Colony are skidding out on a banana peel. At last month's debate in the House of Lords, for example, it was revealed that Great Britain is small enough to deny thirty Hong Kong war widows the right to live in the land their husbands died for. Whereas just five years ago Mrs. Thatcher would go to Peking and boldly note that "those who don't honor one treaty will not honor another," this month a foreign-affairs committee from the House of Commons arrives here to investigate why Britain is not honoring a treaty Mrs. Thatcher herself signed.

That treaty is the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the document that sets out the terms for the transfer of sovereignty from London to Peking when the 99-year lease on Hong Kong's New Territories expires in 1997, Initially, it was met with enthusiasm: after all, theagreement provided that "the social and cconomic systems in Hong Kong shall remain unchanged" and pointed toward selfrule by a local government enjoying "a high degree of autonomy." In official Green and White Papers, the picture presented to people here by the British was one in which China would get Hong Kong but Hong Kong would get democracy.

However, the considerable evidence that this picture is not going to be brought into being has led to a massive collapse of confidence, with anyone who can scrape up enough money for a passport getting out. If the

Commons delegation report is to be charactcrized by a frankness hitherto absent from the Tories' treatment of its prize colony, it will have to zero in on this point: that the failure here is a Conservative one, Margaret Thatcher's in particular. It was her government that signed the agreement with Peking; her government that sold it to the British subjects of Hong Kong on the basis of certain reforms to come; and her government that is backing away from initiating the changes that would give that agreement a fighting chance. "We expected problems with China, but what we never expected was the degree to which Britain would give in to every Chinese whim," says Martin Lee, Queen's Counsel and champion of the democratic lobby here. "All we are trying to do is to hold Britain and China to their agreement."

At its root, the tension over Hong Kong's future is owing to the more or less unique structure of its colonial administration, where authority is centralized in a governor who holds as much power as Genghis Khan ever did. This works because of the marvelous disinclination of British officials to invoke their powers, reserving them, as intended, for times of emergency. Mainland leaders, by contrast, have never stood accused of a disinclination to invoke power. Hence the political structure will have to be altered to prevent China from abusing it.

The agreed-upon solution to this dilemma was thus to replace an informal British restraint with formal checks on power, primarily by making future Hong Kong politicians accountable to the people; thus the Joint Declaration stipulates that a legislature "shall be constituted by elections," and most people interpreted this as meaning direct elections by 1988. In this context, Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe's insistence that he never actually promised direct elections by 1988 makes him sound like a divorce lawyer whose client suddenly decides he's not going to give his wife the house after all.

What made holding direct elections by 1988 so critical was that it was the last chance to influence the Basic Law, the mini-constitution that will govern post-1997 Hong Kong. "The real question is power," explains John Walden, a former high-ranking career-civil-service officer here who has written two books on the government's ever-widening credibility gap. "If the Chinese draft a Basic Law where the legislature has no power and it is still all centralized in the executive, it hardly matters whether the legislature is later elected or selected at random. The most important component of real democracy will still be missing: accountability."

Throughout all this, Mrs. Thatcher's silence has been thundering across the seas. The most likely explanation why she does not even defend her own policy, which is clearly not working, is that she is not happy with it and does not wish to have any peace-in-ourtime statements about trusting in Peking's good intentions tagged to her name in the history books. It can't please her, for example, that virtually the only strong opinion Hong Kong's governor, Sir David Wilson, holds is on the "need" to send boat people back to Vietnam against their will, even though Hong Kong is suffering from an acute labor shortage, Nor can she be happy with the sight of the governor, going to Peking hat in hand to clear things with the Chinese, in a clear violation of the Joint Declaration's provision that during the runup to 1997 "the Government of the United Kingdom will be responsible for the administration of Hong Kong" and enjoy China's "cooperation."

But the most basic reason for her displeasure must be the Foreign Office approach, which runs counter to her every instinct to speak forthrightly on matters of principle. A case in point came earlier this year when the Wall Street Journal carried an editorial arguing that Britain's failure to enforce the 1984 Joint Declaration called her honor into question. The reaction from the Foreign Office was swift; could the prime minister have space to reply?

Yes, indeed, said the Journal; but instead of the Iron Lady, Sir Geoffrey was trotted out like a trained seal, defending a Joint Declaration the editorial hadn't attacked, denying a "brain drain" that even the British government here says is its top problem, and making it perfectly clear that however bad things get Britain will not do anything China disapproves of. Behind the doors of 10 Downing Street Mrs. Thatcher maintained her Trappist-like silence.

Caught between Tory rock and Communist hard place, folks here have been voting the only way they can: with their feet. This was made more difficult by the 1981 British Nationality Act, which made it clear that Britain's nonwhite subjects were not welcome in Mother England. Nonetheless, emigration from Hong Kong has soared, with Australia, Canada, and the U.S. being the preferred destinations; and recent polls indicating that fully half the professional class intends to get out. In good Hong Kong fashion, someone has even started up a glossy new magazine called The Emigrant, to make a profit out of the situation.

FOR THE Chinese and British both, it is a particularly ironic denouement. What the British achieved in Hong Kong was arguably a Chinese ideal. The veteran Chinese journalist Ki-fan Tsang put it this way: "This is the only Chinese society that, for a brief span of one hundred years, lived through an ideal never realized at any time in the history of Chinese societies-a time when no man had to live in fear of the midnight knock on the door." How ironic too that the people trying hardest to preserve this British achievement are attacked by Tory MPs as "troublemakers" with "a vested interest in spreading unease."

Perhaps Hong Kong's fate was inevitable, in the sense that Britain today could never really prevent a China determined to have its way over Hong Kong. But the reason for shame is that the world's most anti-Communist and principled leader is allowing it to go down without so much as a whimper of protest over the gross violations of a treaty that bears her signature.

"For us this is the most disappointing of all," says Mr. Lee, looking worn and wan among his leatherbound texts. "If Margaret Thatcher were here in my position she'd be doing the exact same thing."