Richard at Peking Duck has some bad news about the political future of Hong Kong.
Bad, but not really surprising.
I’ve never understood how Margaret Thatcher’s admirers squared her willingness to fight a war over the Falklands with her abject surrender of the rights of a couple of million people in Hong Kong. Holding on to the territory was clearly not an option. But Britain could have made the place much more democratic — for example, with an entirely elected, though still mostly advisory, legislature — while it was still in charge.
Update and retraction This turns out to be inaccurate. While the next-to-last LegCo election under the British included a mix of direct election and appointment by various interest groups, the final election was entirely direct. So the mainland actually had to deny the Hong Kong population voting power they had (briefly) enjoyed as a colony.