HONG KONG -- July 1, 2003 -- when at least 500,000 Hong Kongers marched in nonviolent protest -- will live long in memory, provided that Hong Kong remains an oasis of freedom set in China's authoritarian sea. But it was also a day that will almost certainly be expunged from the Chinese collective memory if Hong Kong is reduced to just one more city in a dictatorial ocean.

First and last, the protest march brought Hong Kong's wheel of fate full circle. The last time there was such a huge disciplined display of people power in Hong Kong was when a million or so Hong Kongers took to the streets in June 1989 to protest the Tiananmen Square massacre, thereby destroying forever the myth that Hong Kong was inhabited by a politically apathetic citizenry.

China's Communist leaders suffered many shocks in the spring of 1989. As demonstrations erupted across the nation following the student protests in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party leadership realized it was not as beloved by the people as it had thought it was. Hence the Tiananmen massacre aimed at intimidating and inhibiting the demonstrators' subversive emotions.