Hong Kong's media and business elites have also been criticized for kowtowing to Beijing. The South China Morning Post newspaper -- Hong Kong's leading English language daily -- was once seen as the colonial establishment's mouthpiece. Now the deputy editor is a former Communist Party cadre from mainland China and the newspaper is perceived as a mouthpiece for Beijing.

Hong Kong's liberal-minded professional middle class is especially suspicious of Beijing's efforts to rewrite history to its own liking. An otherwise respected pro-Beijing politician sparked condemnation last month when he said the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, was not a massacre. In Hong Kong terms, such a statement is as toxic as a Holocaust denial in the West.

The stifling of democratic ambitions makes for solid ground from which to attack China's administration of Hong Kong. But if the question is, "what's changed since the British left," the answer is not much. Hong Kong wasn't a democracy during the colonial era, either. Ironically, British feared giving Hong Kong the right of self-determination as much as the Chinese now do.