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“Time of Uncertainty Begins: Will Beijing Honor Vows?” read the headline on the front page of The New York Times on July 1, 1997, the day Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule. “Vows” refers to the terms China and Britain agreed to in 1984 on Hong Kong’s transfer, including a promise that Hong Kong would retain its civil liberties and capitalist way of life for 50 years after becoming “an inalienable part” of Communist-ruled China.

Now, two of Hong Kong’s most prominent democrats are turning the question on Britain.

“We’re concerned that neither of the two signatories to the Joint Declaration — that is, China and Britain — is adequately fulfilling their respective responsibilities on the terms of this internationally binding treaty,” Anson Chan, formerly Hong Kong’s second-ranking official, said at a parliamentary committee hearing in London on Wednesday.



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In the 1984 Joint Declaration, the Chinese government declared that Hong Kong would become a special region of China that would enjoy “a high degree of autonomy,” vested with “executive, legislative and independent judicial power.”

But Mrs. Chan and Martin Lee, a lawyer and founder of the Democratic Party, said during the parliamentary hearing in London that this autonomy was under threat, raising an array of concerns about Beijing’s increasing “interference in Hong Kong’s internal affairs.” They also faulted the British government for not criticizing China’s recent white paper on Hong Kong, in which Beijing asserted its “complete jurisdiction” over the territory.

“We understand that the United Kingdom, like many other nations, is keen to expand its trade ties with an increasingly wealthy and economically powerful China. We welcome this,” Mrs. Chan said to the committee. “But I want to stress that this cannot and must not be at the expense of its legal and moral obligations to Hong Kong under the terms of the Joint Declaration.”

Last month, Premier Li Keqiang of China met his British counterpart, David Cameron, at 10 Downing Street. They oversaw the signing of deals worth more than $23.5 billion and reaffirmed their commitment to raise bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015. The British news media reported that Mr. Cameron had declined to meet with Mrs. Chan and Mr. Lee during their visit to Britain this week.

In its latest semiannual report on Hong Kong, released last week, the British government said that “one country, two systems” — the formula under which Hong Kong enjoys many civil liberties, such as freedom of assembly and of the press — “continued to work well, in general, and that the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Joint Declaration and Basic Law continued to be upheld.”

But Mrs. Chan disagreed. In her testimony before the parliamentary committee, she said there was “an insidious erosion of freedoms, in particular the freedom of the press,” citing cases in which thugs assaulted a crusading former newspaper editor, banks withdrew millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements from a newspaper critical of Beijing and a radio station dismissed a popular host who was a vocal critic of the Chinese government.

The Hong Kong police have said there is no reason to believe that the knife attack on Kevin Lau, the former chief editor of Ming Pao, in February was related to his work as a journalist. The banks, including HSBC and Standard Chartered, said their withdrawal of ads from Apple Daily last year was a commercial decision. Commercial Radio declined to comment on the dismissal of the host.

Mrs. Chan also said the white paper that China’s State Council released last month “calls into question Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and implies that this degree of autonomy can be given or taken away at Beijing’s pleasure.”

And Mr. Lee, the lawyer who was a member of the panel that drafted Hong Kong’s Basic Law, which serves as its constitution, said that the white paper was a blow to the independence of the Hong Kong judiciary because it imposed political requirements on judges.

Richard Ottaway, a member of Parliament and chairman of the committee that heard from Mrs. Chan and Mr. Lee on Wednesday, said that the committee would announce a report as early as next week on the British government’s policy toward Hong Kong, but “it’s not a report into the internal operations of Hong Kong.” Within two months of its publication, the British government will have to respond to the conclusions and recommendations set out in the report.

Mrs. Chan said, “We need the United Kingdom to speak up forcefully in defense of the core values and way of life that distinguishes Hong Kong so sharply from the rest of China.”

The attempts of Mr. Lee and Mrs. Chan to lobby foreign countries, including the United States — the two also met Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at the White House in April — have drawn Beijing’s ire.

On Tuesday, the two met with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who said that the British government would “mobilize the international community and pursue every legal and other avenue available” if China violated the Joint Declaration. In response, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Chinese government had lodged “solemn representations” with Britain and that China opposed “any interference in Hong Kong’s affairs, that is, China’s internal affairs, by any foreign forces using whatever pretext.”

The meeting with Mr. Clegg took place on the same day that the Hong Kong government set in motion a process of electoral changes that would for first time allow all the city’s voters — 3.51 million are registered, out of a pool of about five million eligible — to vote for the city’s next top official, the chief executive. But the push to implement one person one vote in 2017 has not allayed the concerns of many in Hong Kong that the election laws would rule out any candidates not approved by Beijing.

Activist groups, chief among them Occupy Central With Love and Peace, have threatened to stage a sit-in in the city’s main business district, Central, if Beijing does not allow a genuine choice in 2017. On the July 1 anniversary of the handover this year, Hong Kong saw one of the largest marches in its history, with many of the participants calling for the public to be allowed to nominate candidates for chief executive.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, is expected to meet in late August to draw up a blueprint for Hong Kong’s electoral overhaul.