There was always a way to find things out in Hong Kong.
Because one of the papers in the Copley chain for which was reporting during the Vietnam War was the San Diego Union, near great naval and marine bases in California, there was interest in warship movements.
Hearing from my home office that a major U.S. Seventh Fleet task force was nearing Hong Kong in a few days or sooner I checked at the press office of the American Consulate on Garden Road, in those days staffed with more personnel (mainly China watchers) than any American installation--embassies included-- in the world.
"We can't give out such information. Ship movements are classified," said a clerk from Nebraska.
Whereupon the intrepid foreign correspondent heads for the Wanchai waterfront. There, from their own sources, bars with names like China Moon, OK Corral, and Paradise Cafe flaunted blackboard signs with such information as:
"Welcome officers and men of the USS Kittyhawk, USS Blue Ridge, USS Henderson, USS Sea Dragon. Enjoy your three days in Hong Kong."
Freedom of information had prevailed once again.
The best-known skeptics, as I have noted, are Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten, who details his doubts outspokenly in his book East and West.
Friedman predicts that within two years of taking control, Beijing will impose capital controls and replace Hong Kong' independent currency pegged to the U.S. dollar with the Chinese Renminbi. Explains Friedman, who discounts Beijing's assurances that this will never happen: "I cannot conceive of a proud sovereign country like China entertaining the prospect of having two currencies at the same time." The slightest hint of such actions, he notes, will cause "drastic loss of confidence in one aspect of Hong Kong namely as a place to store money."
"One country, two systems" is a sham and Hong Kong's lifestyle is changing in less than 50 months after the handover, let alone the "50 years" that Beijing promised.
