There's currently a lot of controversy in the media over China expanding their influence over Hong Kong:
Long before the Umbrella Movement or last year's sustained political unrest, this reputation was cemented in 2003, when mass marches against a proposed anti-sedition law known as Article 23 succeeded in forcing the government to shelve the legislation. In the 17 years since, despite promises to do so and much prodding from Beijing, no Hong Kong administration has dared restart this process.
This week, Beijing's patience ran out. On the back of more than six months of often violent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong last year, the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber-stamp parliament, put forward plans to introduce a national security and anti-sedition law on the city's behalf, bypassing Hong Kong's legislature via a rarely used constitutional backdoor.
However it seems strange that many people still have a vision of Hong Kong being an independent entity, despite de facto being under the full control of its parent. If anything, its strange that China even bothered maintaining an independent government in Hong Kong for so long, instead of taking over the reigns shortly after 1997. Likewise it was surprising that China tolerated mass protests in Hong Kong for more than a year, rather that swiftly crushing them using their nigh-unlimited supply of armed policemen.
Are there any polls available from 1997 showing the opinion of Hong Kong residents on the future of their country? Did they expect that China would swiftly take over or did they actually believe that China will maintain the "one country, two systems" rule for as long as it promised?