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Hong Kong is part of China, but enjoys a charmed existence. Administered separately from the rest of the Peoples Republic of China, the territory respects civil liberties while hosting the worlds freest economy. But democratic Hong Kong is not.

Demonstrators are pressing Beijing to make good on its promise to Great Britain to provide what London never did while the territory was a British colony: democratic rule and free elections. But the PRC will not, indeed, cannot, give residents of Hong Kong what it refuses to give the rest of its citizens. The citys future depends on finding a compromise that preserves Hong Kongs freedom and peace.

The British colony grew out of Imperial Chinas weakness. As the empire fell from dominance to irrelevance Great Britain seized territory. Portugal did the same with Macau, a short distance away.

Britains imperialist land grab redounded to the benefit of Hong Kongs residents. China was badly ruled even while independent. The country suffered through foreign intervention, revolution, war lords, Japanese invasion, civil war, and Communist control. In contrast, people in Hong Kong prospered, enjoying economic liberty, rule of law, and civil liberties. All they had to sacrifice was democracy, which they wouldnt have had in China, and certainly not under the PRC.

Alas, all good things come to an end, at least when it comes to foreign policy. Great Britain took three bites at the apple: it seized Hong Kong Island, then the Kowloon Peninsula, and later leased the New Territories. In 1997 the latters 99-year term ran out. At which point Beijing was legally entitled to take back the New Territories.

Dividing Hong Kong would have been a practical nightmare. And Beijing might not have continued to honor territorial cessions forced more than a century before. So in 1984 Britains famed Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, agreed to the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which committed her government to the full territorys return.

The transfer left one of historys great What ifs? What if Prime Minister Thatcher announced that even though the initial land grab was unjust, the result was a unique political community independent of the PRC? The territory never had been subject to the mainlands communist government, two revolutions away from the imperial court which yielded Hong Kong to London. What if the Thatcher government went on to explain it was scheduling a referendum in which the territorys residents could freely express their decision: join the PRC, remain British, or become independent?

Few likely would have opted for Beijing. China in 1997 was very different from that ruled by Mao Zedong, who died 21 years before. But the PRC still was a poor, authoritarian state, early in the process of economic reform. None of Hong Kongs residents could remember life under China. Today barely one-fifth of the citys 7.2 million residents even identify as Chinese.

At the time a still weak and isolated Beijing probably would have felt little choice but to accept an adverse vote. However, such a strategy would have inflamed the PRCs desire to reverse prior injustices. China might have chosen to bide its time, as it has done with Taiwan. Then Hong Kong today would be another fractious, potentially violent, territorial dispute in East Asia.

English: Full view of Kowloon and Hong Kong (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Democracy in Hong Kong? Only Over Beijing's Dead Body -- But Hopefully Not Over The Demonstrators' Bodies