HONG KONG — For the nearly 17 years since Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China in 1997, we Hong Kongers have been dreaming of the genuine democracy that was promised by Beijing. But today our autonomy and the rule of law it buttresses are under threat from the mainland central government.

Infringement on the freedom of the Hong Kong press has been the most recent example of Beijing’s meddling in our affairs. But even more pernicious is an ongoing campaign by the mainland leadership and its local allies to deny Hong Kongers the right to a democratic future, a right that was guaranteed to us in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and in our mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which was promulgated in 1990.

The world backed the deal to transfer Hong Kong from Britain to China when China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, promised to uphold a new arrangement he called “one country, two systems.” We took these words to heart.

Since 1997, we have plodded along with a quasi-democratic political system. Today, only half of our legislators are elected directly by the people, while the rest are chosen by a group of professional associations called “functional constituencies,” the majority of which are controlled by Beijing. The chief executive, as our leader is called, is picked by a Beijing-friendly committee of only 1,200 people (in a city of seven million).