Foreign Affairs committee  I think, yes. The answer is it is impossible under current circumstances. China would have to be a different China for democracy to flourish. It's not in the cards any time soon. If I could just make one point that came up earlier about the early years and about universal suffr

Foreign Affairs committee  I think sadly, very little. I think that certainly the party in power until possibly midnight tonight, has favoured commerce, has favoured trade. It's the sign of the times, and everyone's doing it. But they have had a very difficult time finding their point of intercession. What

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, it's a very tricky one. As everyone has said, the ability of the Chinese to suggest foreign interference has been a neuralgic issue for Hong Kong since the eighties. The question was, would Britain deliberately destabilize Hong Kong after they left? Would democracy be a vang

Foreign Affairs committee  I think you said it as well as I could have. What I was trying to say in my testimony was that Deng had many negative facets to him, but he had a certain sense of security about Hong Kong. He recognized its value, not only its economic value but also its value to China, to Taiwa

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, it's easy to do, because I think the previous witness did a marvellous job of framing the issues. I thank the chairman very much for inviting me today. May I also parenthetically thank the staff, who did an amazing job of dealing with all the logistics. My own research is