Hong Kong Handover marked

I considered the title of this post carefully. Hong Kong celebrates the Hong Kong celebrates the Hong Kong Handover seemed too positive. The city certainly doesn't feel celebratory. By the same token, Hong Kong remembers the handover sounded to downbeat. The city certainly doesn't miss British rule. The handover is simply a date to mark.

It's a funny time in Hong Kong. Fifteen years after the handover rather than feeling more settled the city has rarely felt more restless. Apart from a rocky few years immediately after 1997, Hong Kong has enjoyed steady economic progress and given the fears most people held privately about the 'Great Chinese takeaway' prior to the handover almost everyone was relieved that the city was allowed to carry on doing business as normal.

But in recent years, relief has given way to a public more vocal in their demands for democracy and - more importantly - more parity between the rich and poor. Belief that China would - over the years - slowly give in to more democratic demands has crumbled while Hong Kong's own leaders have ensured the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer.

The Basic Law that governs Hong Kong has been proven to work but only in a practical sense. What it hasn't done is help bridge the gap between Beijing's grim paranoia about personal freedoms and democracy and the expectations of Hong Kongers. Hong Kong believed the Basic Law was a document that marked the start of a conversation on change in the city, for Beijing the document was the end of the conversation.

Make no mistake there is no revolution in the air, Hong Kongers are more practical than that, but surveys show that people have never felt less attached to the mainland and no incoming Chief Executive has had such poor public support.

Hong Kongers may not be storming the Bastille but they are unhappy and it's an unhappiness that it growing.