In 1994, I traveled to Hong Kong for the first time and realised that it was still a colony. It was towards the end of the 20th century and yet HK citizens did not get the right to choose their leaders, which India got in 1935 long before 1947 (when the partition took place) from the same British rulers. The thing that struck me the most at that time was that most of the signboards/bill boards in HK had English spelling errors. At that time, I realised that the Chinese in HK did not get English by their heart!

However, rumours were running high among the British rulers even before that time trying to understand whether the treaty could be extended or could be nullified. But China stood firm and told the UK government that they have no choice but to leave HK and return the territorial sovereignty to the Chinese.

The discussion of returning HK to China led to a large scale out-migration of people who had no trust in the Chinese government and thought that they would find a "better" place abroad. Canada, Britain and Australia opened doors of fast track immigration processing to the HK people. It appeared to be a race for some of the HK citizens to leave winding up their businesses.

Western press refueled the exodus by creating "stories" full of speculation about "HK after British rule!" -- as if the whole world were coming to an end in Hong Kong in 1997! The hype was useful to some extent; it kept pressure on the Chinese government to accept a separate status for HK. Making things worse, the British government decided to give the "power" back to the people a year before leaving HK. What a joke it was!

On July 1, 1997 Hong Kong returned to China. China was very careful in handling the new territory. They adopted a "one China, two systems" policy and made Hong Kong a separate zone. The result: Hong Kong economy grew at a faster rate than expected. HK citizens got a country, a proud citizenship (prior to that they had no citizenship!) and in return retained their separate economic system. On July 1, 2007 at the eve of the 10th anniversary of the return of HK to China, the Chinese press was upbeat. Media was proud and explained to the world that China is a strong nation. It has made the world press a laughing stock in terms of their analysis on the future of Hong Kong (or for other parts of the world).

The ride since 1997 was not smooth for Hong Kong. First, there was the Asian Financial Crisis -- HK economy was almost down! Luckily, China was their country (not UK!) and so China stood by and backed the HK economy like one of their own. This is what it meant by their one country policy. After this came the collapse of the real estate bubble that had driven the HK economy for long -- then the Avian Flu and the Sars pandemic. Yet the HK economy experienced on average a 6 percent growth with only unemployment 3 percent and a huge budgetary surplus.

Most interestingly, the capital flight out of HK that began in the early 90s reversed after China took over HK. The size of Hong Kong Stock Exchange has passed New York Stock Exchange today. Hong Kong has retained its differences in terms of basic laws.

The People's Liberation Army -- whose march in 1997 to downtown Hong Kong was labeled by the western press as a sign of "repression" is receiving great appreciation from its people. The HK passport lets them visit 110 countries without visa formalities and the HK economy is more connected to the mainland economy than ever before.

Why am I saying all this? Well it just happened that I am in China now and have been watching all this on Chinese television. True that some of you might say that all that I have said cannot be true but it is also true that I am using numbers to explain the facts. With this story, my appeal to all is to understand that the western press does a lot of propaganda. Let it be the free press of the West or the state controlled media of the Chinese government, we should all try to understand that press reports are often conjectures based on radical hypothesis and remarks are swift and too much of over generalisation! In terms of predicting the future they open act like "palm readers."