Leading Article: Defeat for the appeasers

YESTERDAY'S announcement that Peking is ready to discuss Governor Chris Patten's proposals for Hong Kong's future electoral arrangements is not just 'a victory for common sense', as Mr Patten put it, but also a defeat for the appeasers. Ever since Mr Patten put forward his plans last October to broaden the franchise for the 1995 elections to the colony's Legislative Council, advocates of the pre-emptive cringe to Peking - ranging from professional Sinologists and former governors to businessmen keen to secure Chinese contracts - have been warning that Mr Patten's proposals were doomed and would bring nothing but woe. Their sniping took place against a background of heavy verbal bombardment from Peking, which accused Mr Patten of speaking like a Buddha, thinking like a serpent and behaving like a prostitute.

The significance of yesterday's news is that the Peking government is ready to stop shouting about the Patten proposals and start talking. True, the talks may break down; or the Chinese team may seek to spin them out, which will amount to the same thing, since the British will then feel obliged to pass the proposals direct to the Legislative Council. But the change of heart in Peking proves that the issue was never as simple as the China lobby liked to paint it.

For Peking, Hong Kong has long ceased to be - if it ever was - an isolated phenomenon. In the manner in which it treats the colony up to and after assuming sovereignty in 1997, China will help to define its own role in the world. The slaughter in Tiananmen Square, and the need for rehabilitation that it created, made it less, rather than more, likely that in the medium term China would be prepared to risk everything to crush a modest pre-handover flowering of democracy in the colony. Since then, Peking has presided over an astonishing liberalisation of economic development in its southern provinces, in which Hong Kong entrepreneurs are playing a large role. China is a country in the throes of dynamic change. The strength of the centre is weakening. Money speaks louder than the party in many regions.

As it begins to function more like other major economic powers, its leaders seek to play an appropriate role on the world stage. In the short term, they are seeking membership of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. They want Peking to play host to the Olympic Games in the year 2000. They are anxious for renewal of most-favoured nation status, which will allow access to the US market. Civil rights activists want strings attached. As a bastion of free trade, however, Hong Kong favours unconditional renewal, as Mr Patten will tell Washington next month.

Further ahead, there is China's hope that eventually Taiwan, too, will be gathered in to one great reunited Chinese family. Yet democracy there is already more advanced than it would be in Hong Kong if Mr Patten's proposals were accepted undiluted. More broadly, there is the question of what role China will play in the next century. If its government wishes to prejudice the country's future in all these fields, it has only to undermine the economy and terrorise the people of Hong Kong. Yesterday's announcement suggests that Peking is collectively capable of looking further ahead than some of those who kowtow to its power.