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There's another defence, too, and it's where we've seen no end of argument in recent years. I don't want to go over wearyingly familiar ground today. But the pledge that Hong Kong people should run Hong Kong was given muscle by the agreement in 1984 that democracy should be steadily developed here, and that was also thought to be the best way of reassuring people that all their other civil liberties would be protected.
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How much ink has been spilt on the question of the election arrangements for our Legislative Council? How much sound and fury have been stirred up by the to most sensible people unthreatening prospect of Hong Kong people being given the chance to take part in fair elections.
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All those words, all that ink to explain the fact that the only reason we haven't got a through train for our legislature is that China wanted arrangements which would keep some people off the train altogether, regardless of the fact that the people of Hong Kong wanted to vote for them. And China of course has been supported in that by some local people who within recent memory were pressing Britain for a faster pace of democratisation.
Britain has kept its word on democratic development in Hong Kong. It remains to be seen whether China will. But don't forget that counting the days until you find out shouldn't be necessary. The question should have been answered already, has been answered already. Will we actually get the same answer next year as the one in the Joint Declaration?
Now where does all this leave us? It leaves us feeling strongly that we should stop counting the days until we see whether or not this arithmetical exercise was unnecessary. More sensible, surely, to behave as though it was unnecessary and have the self-confidence to make sure that it is unnecessary.
We can't count our way to a better future. We have to work for that. Argue for that. Stand up for that.
I don't believe that people have been ticking off the years and months and days since the Joint Declaration was first signed. That hasn't been the basis for Hong Kong's development. People have got on with their lives, made the most of things, the best of things, and the best has happened.
That should still be the way ahead for Hong Kong. You see counting is in a way a cop-out. Hong Kong, I repeat, was promised that things wouldn't change. I intend to do everything I can while I'm here to give momentum to that promise.
I'm sure that Hong Kong will insist that it's a promise which is kept.
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