Hong Kong in 2017: wrestling with China

By James Pomfret and Edwin Chan

HONG KONG (Reuters) - 2017.

Beijing enforces Hong Kong's birdcage democracy. The stock market sputters. Nouveau riche Chinese run the show. That, at least, is what some prominent observers think.

As Hong Kong marks the 10th anniversary of its handover to Chinese rule on a rain-swept night in 1997, many agree the city's new masters have largely kept their word -- and the status quo.

But in 2017, 10 years from now, residents, activists, tycoons and economists gazing into crystal balls see brakes on democracy, a greater "Chinese-ness" and a waning of Hong Kong's financial muscle.

"Beijing is extremely happy about (Hong Kong's) situation and there's absolutely no reason for them to change tactics," said Willy Lam, a well-known China commentator.

"There's no reason for them to be so generous as to allow Hong Kong to have a faster pace of democracy."

The city's mini-constitution states that universal suffrage is the ultimate goal but is vague on a timetable, giving Beijing scope to dictate the pace of progress. Democrats and a majority of the public, however, want a one-man, one-vote system by 2012.

Although a younger, "fifth generation" of Communist Party leaders will have replaced President Hu Jintao and his colleagues by then, analysts don't see much loosening of the political reins.

"The fifth generation will not do anything in the first term, because this is a Chinese tradition, where the first priority for leaders is to consolidate their position," said Lam.

TAKING STOCK

Ten years after the handover, anxieties may have eased considerably. But some rue an erosion of the "Pearl of the Orient's" famed cosmopolitanism -- a trend that will quicken with a continuing influx of Chinese officials, tourists and fortune-seekers lured by the bright lights, big city aura.

"There's less of that East-West hybrid that Hong Kong used to enjoy, (Hong Kong) is much more Chinese quintessentially," said tycoon and socialite David Tang, founder of luxury clothing brand Shanghai Tang.

"Everybody who is resident in Hong Kong has come to accept that the mainlanders are going to hold sway as being the most important people of the city in another 10 years time," he added.

But that may threaten what some see as a core element of what makes Hong Kong Hong Kong.

"What makes us different, what makes us important, and what makes us successful, is our internationalism. And we don't want to lose that," said property fund manager Peter Churchouse, who has lived in the city for 27 years.