At age 20, Hong Kong SAR should be treated as an adult

PRESIDENT Xi Jinping last July 1 congratulated Hong Kong on the 20th anniversary of its return to China and its transformation from a British colony into the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). He said: "According to China's tradition, a man enters adulthood at the age of 20, so today, we are celebrating the coming of age of the HK SAR."

Over the last 20 years, Hong Kong has on the whole been successful despite prognostications in the western media of its imminent demise, exemplified by such articles as Fortune magazine's "The Death of Hong Kong", published in June 1995.

Coming of age should mean that the SAR is expected to make more decisions and assume greater responsibilities. But it appears that forces within the central government wish Hong Kong to be more obedient than before, while there are officials in Hong Kong who believe that scraping and bowing is the way to deal with Beijing.