At midnight, July 1, it will have been exactly a decade since the great city of Hong Kong passed from one sovereign to another. One moment it was a British Dependent Territory of the United Kingdom; the next it was a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. (Why the fancy terminology? Neither London nor Beijing, apparently, liked using the word “colony.”)

Colony or not, Hong Kong was handed from a democracy to an authoritarian regime. It was a disgraceful exercise of state power for both countries involved. This was not the mere transfer of a “barren rock,” as Hong Kong was once known. The city had become, by the late 90’s, a major international center for trade, finance, and culture. More than six million citizens woke up on July 1, 1997 as subjects of a new regime—without their electoral consent. It was clear that, had there been an election, the people of Hong Kong would have voted not to return to the motherland. So it’s no surprise that the city’s Chinese rulers, who do not believe in elections (especially those held among uncontrollable populaces), have blocked the development of democratic institutions in Hong Kong for the past decade.

This is not what the Basic Law—Hong-Kong’s “mini-constitution—intended. That document promises the city universal suffrage. Yet Beijing has time and again told the people of Hong Kong that they’re not ready to make decisions for themselves. In the interim, a system rigged in favor of a small group of China’s favorite Hong Kong citizens has been used to pick the chief executive, as the city’s leader is known. So add Hong Kong to the list of the broken promises of communism. Despite major pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong every year since the handover—especially in July 2003 and January 2004—Beijing has continued to sneer at its residents.

There is, however, a small measure of justice in this world. In the ten years since the “reunification,” the people of Taiwan have watched how Chinese leaders have failed to keep their word to Hong Kong. Today, a sharply declining portion of Taiwanese—usually no more than 15 percent in the polls—want their island to join the mainland. For the rest of us, Beijing’s high-handed treatment of Hong Kong is even more evidence that the Communist party has no intention of ever permitting meaningful political reform in China.

So where was I during the last seconds of British rule on June 30, 1997? Standing in the Hard Rock Café in Shanghai, in the middle of a crowd of inebriated Chuppies—members of China’s explosively burgeoning upper middle class. They were cheering as they watched televised images of the goose-stepping soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army at the handover ceremony taking place in Hong Kong. For them, it was a moment of pride and joy: a long-held British colony was finally returning to the bosom of the motherland. I had other emotions.