[Democracy] is obviously an issue which is hugely important to a new generation [of Hong Kong people]. - Chris Patten

While we were allegedly taking part in a golden age of China, the head of the Chinese Communist Party was instructing party officials and government officials to engage in an intense struggle against all the things that we and other liberal democracies stand for: Rule of law, parliamentary democracy, universally valid human rights, historical inquiry, all those sorts of things.

It is not unusual for electorates to want contradictory things, and politicians often make promises accordingly.

[M]y anxiety is not that this community's autonomy would be usurped by Peking, but that it could be given away bit by bit by some people in Hong Kong.