China has made it clear that there can be no reasonable expectation of a change in its hardline policy towards Hong Kong when the British colony is handed back at the end of June 1997. Attempts to create internal democracy ironically after more than a century of direct colonial rule will be reversed, and the elected legislative council and other reforms introduced by the governor, Mr Chris Patten, will be abolished. Democracy in Hong Kong has some. persuasive and impressive advocates, such as Mr Martin Lee, who began a North American tour this week; but it is unlikely that the threats emanating from Beijing will meet more than token resistance if they are carried out.
There is a moral case for the Patten reforms particularly in the light of Chinese repression of human rights and the obscenity of Tiananmen Square. But the small dedicated group of local citizens, of whom Mr Lee is the most prominent, who have carried the banner of participative democracy and an open society, has been counterbalanced by the mass exodus of those who might have formed the core of an enlightened opposition to China's stated intention to roll back recent political changes - the mobile capital owners who have hedged their bets with alternative citizenships, investments and houses abroad. They have effectively voted with their feet since the 1980s, though their contribution to Hong Kong's economy after the hand over is not likely to be lost.
Those who remain are largely indifferent to the reform programme of Mr Patten, either because they do not find themselves much affected by it or because they accept the promises of Beijing of a large measure of economic autonomy. Hong Kong's carefully constructed leadership in world finance and trade is an asset that the government of China, with its heavy emphasis on development, will not willingly destroy. How far Beijing will go to link trade and human rights reforms is not easy to decide the likely guess is that it will continue to be impervious to outside pressure and develop its trading links with the West on the gambling certainty that very few states will press demands for political change to the point of losing lucrative contracts. Mr Lee is likely to receive popular acclaim during his visit to the United States and Canada, but no official endorsement that could worsen the trading environment for the US which in any case is deep in uncertainty because of its block to China's members hip of the World Trade Organisation.
China's readiness to play the trade card, which it estimates will involve a turnover of 400 billion dollars by the year 2000 compared to 280 billion dollars in 1995, was evident during last week's visit to France by the Chinese prime minister, Mr Li Peng. The purchase of 33 Airbus aircraft, and the commitment in principle to develop a new commercial jet jointly, opens the way to a vast, growing market for the French and European aircraft industries, but was also a deliberate snub to the Americans. The French prime minister, Mr Herve de Charette, declared that by forging a commercial partnership, France "can hope to make China shift". The most that Hong Kong can probably expect, along with Beijing's promise of economic flexibility, is the slow and uncertain working of this Chinese "shift".