Of all the international events Alexander Downer attended as Australia's Foreign Minister, the 1997 Hong Kong handover was one of the stand-outs.
In the days and hours leading up to the formal handover, he recalls drinking gin and tonics with the Thatchers on board the Royal Yacht Britannia and struggling to hear Prince Charles give his speech at a farewell parade as rain bucketed down, drumming loudly on the umbrellas and creating small waterfalls which soaked those huddled underneath.
The midnight ceremony on June 30, at which Hong Kong officially returned to China after 156 years of British rule, was a much drier affair, held in the convention centre overlooking Victoria Harbour.
Downer was struck by the height of the Chinese soldiers on stage – "they were all around six foot, six inches tall and towered over the British soldiers" – as well as the historic significance of the changing of the flags.
"It was quite a moment in history when the Union Jack was being hauled down," he told AFR Weekend.
"It was the last substantial outpost of the British Empire."
The towering height of the Chinese soldiers that night was no accident. As one officer who took part in the ceremony told the state-owned Tianjin Daily newspaper, participants were chosen for their loyalty, patriotism and physique. They had to be at least 187cm tall.
This was China's big moment on the world stage and there was no room for subtlety.
"The Chinese had selected huge soldiers," remembers Downer.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin gave a reasonably diplomatic speech. While referring to Hong Kong's "century of vicissitudes" under British rule, he also expressed optimism for the "One Country, Two Systems" governing model. This raised hopes the agreement negotiated between Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping 13 years earlier for Hong Kong to stay a capitalist economy and keep its legal system, currency, basic rights and freedoms until 2047, would be upheld.
At the tenth anniversary of the handover, these hopes remained intact as Hong Kong still enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. But 20 years on, many Hongkongers are no longer so sure.
They are concerned Beijing, under current President Xi Jinping, is moving to increase the Communist Party's control over Hong Kong. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in 2014, in what became known as the Umbrella movement, to push for the right to democratically elect their own leader. These efforts captured the world's attention and spawned a new generation of activist politicians but ultimately failed.
The following year, five Hong Kong booksellers specialising in publications banned in China, disappeared and later emerged on the mainland in detention. And earlier this year, a billionaire businessman was reportedly escorted back to the mainland to help Chinese authorities with a corruption investigation. Both cases raised fears about the apparent ability of mainland security agents to operate freely in Hong Kong.
"People are really anxious and concerned because Beijing is interfering and taking a harsh position on Hong Kong and the people feel that One Country, Two Systems may not be around much longer if Beijing continues to behave like that," says former Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau.
On the night of the handover, Lau took part in a protest in Statue Square. She was one of the elected lawmakers set to be ousted and replaced by a China-appointed provisional legislature on July 1.
She recalls there were about a thousand people outside the legislative building, pushing for democratic reform.
"It was a strange feeling that night. I think most people were happy to see the end of colonial rule but they were apprehensive about the Communists. They would not come out to beg the British to stay and they would not come out to tell the Chinese they couldn't take Hong Kong."
"Those who were scared and those who were rich, fled [Hong Kong] and the rest just stayed there and hoped for the best."
Twenty years later, Lau is still taking part in pro-democracy protests but these days the crowds of supporters are bigger.
Apart from concerns around security, freedom of speech and Beijing's control over the election of Hong Kong's chief executive, people complain about the general societal pressures resulting from more engagement with the mainland. Almost a million mainlanders have settled in Hong Kong since the handover and in 2016, 42.8 million Chinese tourists visited, over six times its population. Meanwhile, additional demand for goods, property, health and education has pushed up the cost of living and there is increased competition for university places and graduate jobs.
As Xi Jinping visits Hong Kong for the first time since he became leader, these concerns are expected to motivate demonstrators onto the streets once again.
However, the protest movement is splintering, with younger people like the Umbrella Movement's Joshua Wong taking a more radical stand, calling for self-determination and civil disobedience.
And the old-guard Democrats, including Lau, who are pushing for democratic reform but not independence. These groups have a loose alliance but there are strong divisions.
"While there are some people who ask for independence, I think they are in the minority and most Hong Kong people do not support that," Lau says. "They don't want a revolution. They don't want violence and bloodshed. They want democracy."
Hong Kong's pro-Beijing government seems concerned about the younger activists this week. Wong, along with 26 others, was arrested on Wednesday night for staging a protest at the Golden Bauhinia monument, a gift from the central government to mark the handover.
Back in 1997, many thought Hong Kong was a model for China's transition to a more open political and economic system but that has changed.
"Two decades after the handover and the party-state is uneasy about that the implications of the exceptionalism of 'one country, two systems'," wrote La Trobe University's Nick Bisley in a recent opinion piece.
"Rather than embracing the pluralism that was inherent in the agreement with the UK, the Chinese Communist Party seems intent on bringing Hong Kong into line. But it is discovering that this may be a more difficult task than it realised."
Twenty years ago, Downer attracted some attention for his relatively positive comments about the handover. He said it was time to give Hong Kong a chance under Chinese sovereignty and defended Beijing's decision to send in 4000 People's Liberation Army troops, given it had taken over responsibility for Hong Kong's defence. This contrasted with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's view the show of force was "inappropriate" and "unnecessary".
Downer says there was a lot of doomsday commentary around at the time and he didn't believe Hong Kong was going to "collapse" after the handover.
"Part of what I thought, to use a weary cliche, is that China wouldn't kill the goose which laid the golden egg," he says.
However, asked about Hong Kong's situation now, Downer declines to comment. On its prospects beyond 2047, he says: "hopefully Hong Kong will have clung onto its traditions of liberty and judicial independence and at the same time have evolved to a still more democratic system.
"Who knows what will happen in China? China itself might be a glittering democracy by 2047."
