Inside Out | It’s been 20 years, Hong Kong. Please just get on with the business of what you do best

Andrew Burns, Britain’s first consul general to Hong Kong after the 1997 handover, spoke to a business audience in the days before he retired in 2000.

Erudite and amusing in equal measure, he asked himself what he would say in summary about Hong Kong’s future: “If given just one word, I would say ‘Worry’. But if I were given two words, I would say: ‘Don’t worry’.”

Still today, as we look at Hong Kong’s future with 20 years of “one country, two systems” under our belt, that seems good advice.

So many millions of words have been written in recent weeks about what has happened to Hong Kong since 1997, what its situation is today, and what its future is likely to be up to 2047, that I have some reservations about adding more.

But as someone who – like Frank Ching in the South China Morning Post last Saturday – has been wrestling to understand China and its intentions towards Hong Kong since 1982, the pull is irresistible. Let me add just a few perhaps-distinct points.

As the community prepares for Xi Jinping to fly in to lead celebrations on Hong Kong’s 20th Anniversary under Chinese sovereignty, it is important to emphasise that the transformation of Hong Kong that we have seen in recent years began not in 1997 with China’s resumption of sovereignty, but in 1978, with the emergence of Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese leadership’s decision to re-engage with the world economy.