Hong Kong passes through another landmark tomorrow on the way to reversion of its sovereignty from Britain to China. A selection committee appointed by China will elect the person who will take over from the British governor, Mr Chris Patten. As Mr Patten makes clear in an interview today with this newspaper's Asia Correspondent, he has no regrets about the way he has conducted the colony's affairs during his term of office. He hopes his successor, widely expected to be the shipping tycoon, Mr Tung Chee-hwa, can function as a bridging figure between the two regimes.
Both men face dilemmas on how to conduct their relationship and over whether there will be more continuity than discontinuity between them. Mr Patten insists he has been right to stand up to Chinese bullying tactics, as he describes them, over democracy and human rights. If he had not tried to bring more democratic procedures to the colony he would have had to face an outcry which would have compromised the final period of British rule. But he is vulnerable to the criticism that there was no attempt to make such changes during the preceding long years of British sovereignty. Mr Patten's successor will face the problem of using or discarding legislation and rights provisions in the knowledge that recent changes have raised political expectations among a significant section of Hong Kong's citizenry.
The truth of the matter is that there is no rooted tradition of democracy in the colony and there has not been time for the small but courageous group of politicians around Mr Martin Lee to put down sufficient roots to force or persuade the Chinese to behave differently. Hopes that the Chinese will recognise the accomplished facts of legal and political rights in Hong Kong revolve around, first, the agreements reached with the British governing the handover of power and secondly with an assessment that it is in China's fundamental interests not to disrupt the social and economic structure of the colony.
A large question remains as to whether the patterns of change in China's own social, political and economic structures will eventually lead to a convergence towards the kind of capitalism that has made Hong Kong a symbol of industriousness. The colony has itself changed enormously in the last few decades from a relatively cheap manufacturing enclave to an enormously sophisticated centre of investment and services, a hub for such activities within the vast Chinese marketplace. In the process there has developed a level of social welfare and a public sector undreamt of in the imaginings of Chicago School economists. It is difficult to believe that such sophistication and development will not create their own momentum for future political change, despite Chinese reluctance.
Mr Patten is nonetheless fearful about the future. He says the colonial system is a strange and unique anachronism for contemporary British people for whom the empire ended a long time ago. 1997 will be a highly significant year for China, as party and people's congresses meet and the new political leadership consolidates itself. The return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty will be an immensely symbolic moment for China and for Asia, however much it is regarded as an anachronism by the departing British. In Mr Patten's favour it must be said that he has put up a spirited if belated defence of modern political values which seems bound to leave a substantial legacy.