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For the time being, Hong Kong remains a territory in constant motion. From its towering skyscrapers, business deals are conducted around the globe, around the clock. Its teeming narrow alleyways are alive with the incessant chatter of merchants and shoppers.

Yet, as adept as Hong Kong's 6 million people are at such unremitting action and change, the tiny British enclave is still coming to terms with its scheduled reversion to Chinese sovereignty, now less than two years away.

Although China has promised to allow Hong Kong to continue its boisterous way of life for another 50 years after the transition, lingering doubts over Beijing's posttransition intentions worry nearly every sector of Hong Kong society.

ON BORROWED TIME: Whether or not Hong Kong is ready for what lies ahead, China is coming for its prize. Perched on the edge of Beijing's Tiananmen Square, a 30-foot-high digital clock impassively counts down the number of days, hours, and minutes until the territory's "homecoming" on June 30, 1997.

An identical clock has been installed in the southern Chinese border city of Shenzhen. To the thousands of travelers who pass through the border post each day, it is a poignant reminder that modern Hong Kong is, and always has been, a borrowed place on borrowed time.

For Hong Kong's Christian leaders, fears that the posttransition administration may not grant full religious freedom have led the territory's 1,100 churches to a crisis.

By 1997, it is estimated that one in four Hong Kong Christians will have either left the territory or will be holding a foreign passport. This figure is double the proportion of the general population, which is one in eight. According to the Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement, between 1985 and 1993, up to 75 percent of the territory's pastors in the influential 30 to 50 age bracket emigrated from Hong Kong.

In January, some 800 Hong Kong church leaders met for three days to discuss the implications of the transition. During the symposium, senior Christian figures appealed for calm and for church leaders to hold onto the promises of religious freedom contained in the Basic Law—China's mini-Constitution for post—1997 Hong Kong.

INDEPENDENT OPERATION? Under the Basic Law, churches and parachurches will be permitted to operate independently after 1997. Both Chinese authorities and Hong Kong's religious bodies are to be guided by the so-called three mutuals policy: mutual respect, mutual noninterference, and mutual nonsubordination.

"We have had to make certain assumptions before we can go forward," said Luk Fai, general secretary of the Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement. "So we have made the assumption that the Basic Law will be taken at face value, with both sides honoring it. What else can we stand on?"

After the symposium concluded, however, many delegates admitted that they still have doubts over whether it is realistic to assume that China will adhere strictly to the Basic Law.

"We don't trust the Chinese Communists," said one delegate from a large institutional church denomination. "We don't believe that they are speaking the truth or that they will allow democracy in Hong Kong after 1997."

Less than two months after the Basic Law was unveiled in April 1989, Hong Kong's confidence in China was shattered by news of the government's brutal crushing of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Since then, critics have accused China of already breaching the Basic Law by refusing to allow the territory's Legislative Council to operate beyond the July 1, 1997, threshold or allowing more than one overseas judge to sit on the influential Court of Final Appeal.

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September 1 1995, Vol. 39, No. 10