ONE of the busiest places in Hong Kong these days is the Foreign Correspondents' Club, located in a gracious colonial-style mansion and made famous by John Le Carre in his novel The Honourable Schoolboy.
Le Carre described desultory afternoons when bored members threw knotted napkins at wine bottles, and recounted one (improbable) incident when a member who was the worse for drink (not so improbable) leapt on the table to announce that the Hong Kong MI6 station had been closed down.
If it wasn't then it will be now, when the Union Jack is lowered on Monday evening and the last British forces sail away on HMS Chatham, carrying the modern equivalent if he exists - of Old Craw, MI6's fictional agent in Hong Kong whom Le Carre based on one of the more colourful club members, Australian Dick Hughes.
The place is too packed these days for napkin-tossing, with reporters from all over the world crowded three-deep round the big rectangular bar, where payment is by coupon. But it is still an institution where historic fixtures can be spotted through the tobacco haze, like Clare Hollingworth of the Daily Telegraph, who scooped the world on Hitler's invasion of Poland.
The club was founded in quite dramatic circumstances. It was originally based in Shanghai. At the height of the civil war in 1949, one of its members, Graham Jenkins of Reuters, was arrested by the Kuomintang forces in Shanghai and sentenced to death for reporting, correctly, that the communists had overwhelmed Chiang Kaishek's seat of power in Nanking.
Jenkins had written his will and eaten his last meal when he was suddenly reprieved. Other members of the club had got to Chiang Kaishek and told him how an execution would affect opinion in the United States, which was backing the nationalist general.
The correspondents had to leave Shanghai when the communists took control and they regrouped in Hong Kong, where they founded what is known to every taxi driver simply as the FCC. It had its glamorous moments. The first premises was used for the filming of Love Is a Many Splendoured Thing, starring William Holden, who became a regular at the bar when he returned for The World of Suzie Wong.
Last year, Jenkins (81), said his desire "to see the Chinese flag raised over Hong Kong is down to the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Shanghai, the forerunner of the club in Hong Kong". For the first time in 48 years the FCC will be operating in a Chinese city.
It will celebrate the coming of the communists (again) with a big party, and the atmosphere these evenings is one of excitement and bustle, but underneath the surface, the Hong Kong press is on tenter-hooks and FCC members are uneasy about what the future may hold.
China has very strict censorship on the mainland. After Monday, one part of the country will be a source of books and newspapers full of hostile comment about China, much of it written by FCC members. The FCC as a body also promotes human rights and press freedom issues and is the co-sponsor with Amnesty International of annual human rights awards. This may not be tolerable in future and members will likely come under pressure to tone down criticism of China.
Hong Kong has more foreign correspondents than any other city in the region, and has an important role as an information hub for all of Asia. Time, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune, all vigorous critics of China, print regional editions in Hong Kong. They are staying on. Time, with a 300,000 circulation for its Asia edition, is expanding. The exception is Reuters, which moved to Singapore.
Outspoken Chinese critics of Beijing, like Fong So, who regularly castigates the Communist leadership in his Chinese-language journal the Nineties, are also not folding up. "We're going to continue," he said. But the mainstream media show signs of bending even before the wind blows, as the Democrat leader Mr Martin Lee put it.
Human Rights groups in Hong Kong also regularly publish denunciations of China, and criticisms of Beijing's actions appear in various church newsletters. Small publications may face the dilemma of standing on principle or being shut down. Bishop Zen told The Irish Times last month that the Catholic church would continue to speak up on human rights issues, but advised foreign missionaries in the territory not to provoke Beijing.
The Basic Law, Hong Kong's new constitution, guarantees freedom of the press. However the Chinese Government has reserved the right to take action when national security is threatened. Campaigning for human rights on the mainland is regarded as just such a threat. So too is any advocacy of independence for Tibet, Taiwan or Hong Kong.
Yesterday Tibetan activists flew the Tibetan flag and called for independence in Hong Kong's Statue Square. One protester, Ms Dorji Dolma, sat Buddha-like with her mouth gagged to illustrate being silenced after the handover.
Hong Kong's future leader, Mr Tung Chee-hwa, has said any calls for Tibetan independence will be illegal after the handover. So too may be newspaper reports of such calls. No one really knows how rigorously the new authorities will move against offenders, but 86 per cent of Hong Kong business executives polled by the Far Eastern Economic Review predicted that Hong Kong's press would no longer be free under Chinese rule.
Mr Robert Broadfoot, a consultant who has compiled a report on the media in Hong Kong, said Chinese leaders may not accept the argument that a free flow of information is necessary for business confidence in Hong Kong, as investment is pouring into China, which has heavy censorship, and Singapore, with restrictions on press freedom, is flourishing.
Yesterday, FCC members took time off from such weighty concerns to have their lives put into perspective by the American humourist P.J. O'Rourke. "Hong Kong's handover is a huge growth industry for the world's media, otherwise it's a non-event," the deliberately perverse Rolling Stone writer told a packed luncheon. "The handover is a great thing - for journalists." With more than 8,000 of the world's media in Hong Kong, handovers should be held regularly all over the world as a "full-employment programme".
O'Rourke ended on a more serious note which will echo in the FCC in the coming years. "Are we being tough enough on this story?" he asked. "Is there just a little bit of Beijing cuddle-bunny going on here?"