[zinckiwi]

1997. 1999 was Macau.

I lived in Hong Kong until 1995. The Basic Law is supposed to apply for 50 years, so we should only be about halfway through that. The sense in the HK expat community at the time was skepticism that it would make it the whole way unchallenged, but that China "needed" HK, so it wouldn't rock the boat too much.

Of course, now that is no longer the case. Any optimism we had at the time of the handover was rooted in HK's economic importance but China went and built Shenzhen into a bigger, better Hong Kong within two decades. Still a Special Economic Zone but without all the pesky political baggage.