Prosperity, growth but no vote: Hong Kong's decade under Chinese rule

In 1997, the rain drenched British Army officers and People's Liberation Army troops, it soaked the Prince of Wales and the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, and inundated the British handover ceremony and Chinese fireworks alike. Ten years after the reversion to Chinese rule, it looks like rain again in Hong Kong and it's the deluge that people remember most clearly.

Mr Tam, who runs a shop selling everything from Marxist knick-knacks and Mao portraits to spectacles and lanterns, is moving his wares out of the rain. He reacts sceptically when he hears a foreigner speaking Mandarin, but as someone who came from Beijing 50 years ago to settle in Hong Kong, he's happy to switch from alien Cantonese into northern dialect.

Asked how he feels about China running Hong Kong, he responds: "Mamahuhu" which means "so-so". But his big beef is with the gentrification of the SoHo area where his shop is located. Hong Kong's economy has thrived from the closer relationship with the mainland, defying predictions that unification would see it sidelined by Chinese economic powerhouses such as Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Hong Kong has just witnessed its three fastest years of growth since the late 1980s. "Look at these places. Lots of fancy places. No one comes to mine though," says Mr Tam, pointing towards the row of premises, which include a Lebanese restaurant, a tapas bar, an upmarket Thai place and a couple of estate agents. "Everything is so expensive these days," he adds

Pyrotechnics are going to be a big feature of tomorrow's 10th anniversary celebrations, with a huge display of nearly 32,000 fireworks above Victoria Harbour. "This is the same as during the bloody handover ceremony," says an exasperated Li Fat Cheung, whose classic red and white Hong Kong taxi is stuck behind five Lexuses on Queens Road Central. "The leaders are staying at the Hyatt and it's screwed everything up here. Bah. I don't mind the Chinese coming in - we're all Chinese after all - but it has made things expensive.And it looks like rain." The rain that seems to preoccupy people. Plus the traffic. And, increasingly, democracy.

Among the VIPs visiting the city is President Hu Jintao, who said this week that he was satisfied with the way Hong Kong had developed in the past 10 years. "With the compatriots' united efforts and the solid support from the motherland, I firmly believe Hong Kong will have a more splendid future," President Hu said as he toured a Hong Kong exhibition in Beijing.

China's rulers have largely allowed Hong Kong to govern itself and do not interfere in press freedom. The territory's mini-constitution, called the Basic Law, promises autonomy until 2047 under the "one country, two systems" formula. However, Beijing has not allowed the city's chief executive to be directly elected by universal suffrage, fearing that calls for democracy could spread to the mainland.

As it stands, the chief executive is picked by a committee of 800 electors who largely support Beijing, while only half of the Legislative Council's 60 members are elected. This suits the powerful business lobby, which holds sway in the free-market territory of Hong Kong, where even the top government figure is known as a chief executive. It says democracy is bad for trade and might anger the central leadership.

But calls for increased democracy are growing and polls show most Hong Kong residents favour universal suffrage. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people have taken to the streets to call for more democracy, notably on 1 July 2003.

"The most frightening thing I've experienced since the handover was Beijing's decision in April 2004 that Hong Kong would not have democratic elections," said Martin Lee, a veteran campaigner for universal suffrage. "The rule of law is still fine here - we have independent judges. But the worrying thing is there is no democracy and no sign of a democracy in the future."