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So what do you conclude? Most families have worries and ambitions about day-to-day living. But in most cases those are dwarfed by the questions they raise about the quality of our society and the quality of their lives.
I hope that in due course events, experience will give decent and convincing answers to those questions. But there are one or two things that could be said and done hopefully in the meantime.
It would help for a start if we could hear some reaffirmations of the promises and values contained in the Joint Declaration instead of statements which cast doubt on those pledges to Hong Kong.
It would help, too, if pledges to work for and stand by the Joint Declaration didn't slide off so often into conditional clauses and qualifications.
And it would help as well if we could be sure that all shades of opinion will be welcome to play a part in working out Hong Kong's future. The real question you know isn't whether the present government will co-operate with a few appointed politicians; the question is whether the future government will co-operate with those men and women who most clearly enjoy by every fair test public favour and support. I hope that happens. If it doesn't, then Hong Kong will lose out. Everyone will lose
out.
Hong Kong has grown up. And grown-ups should be treated like grown-ups, wherever they live - especially if that's what they've been promised.
End
Press statement on stationing of PLA advance personnel
A government spokesman today (Sunday) has the following response to the statement made by Cheng Shousan, Deputy Director of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office:
"The JLG has the first round of preliminary exchanges at the defence expert talks on October 24 and 25 on the Chinese side's proposal to station PLA advance personnel in Hong Kong before July 1, 1997.
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