COMMENTARY : A Golden Goose Eyes the Axe : Democracy advocates in Hong Kong want U.S. help in fending off Beijing. The Realpolitik verdict: fat chance.

I worry about Hong Kong. I know, I’m off the wall: Most people worry about their mortgage payments, their spouse’s fantasy life, getting the pet to the vet. I have those worries, too. But as the world wonders about the shape of the so-called new world order, symbolically Hong Kong is very special: Come July 1997, that dynamite little colony’s British rulers will pack their bags, put on their bowlers and tiptoe back to England.

Then the question will be: Will Beijing revert to Cultural Revolution form and eat Hong Kong for lunch, just as it has Tibet?

Hong Kong won’t be Hong Kong unless it endures as a free-spirited free-market enclave. A recent international survey of world economies crowned the marketplace where 6 million people, largely ethnic Chinese, live and work as the freest economy in the world. China needs to live up to the let-Hong Kong-be-Hong Kong spirit of the 1984 exit agreement.

But will Beijing instead jail fearless proponents of democracy like human rights advocate Martin Lee (whose Democratic Party was a big winner in recent elections), pack the courts with party hacks and make everyone wear Mao jackets?

“It’s important that the Chinese handle it well,” Christopher Patten, Britain’s controversial current governor of Hong Kong, told me last week, “because the world will see China through the prism of its dealings with Hong Kong. The changeover goes right to the heart of how China will handle many issues. World opinion will be focused on Hong Kong in 1997 for these reasons. And it should be.” Adds Patten, with his double-edged genius for infuriating Beijing with the undiplomatic dart: “It is unimaginable that the Chinese would kill such a goose. Yet we wouldn’t need the metaphor of golden eggs and geese if history wasn’t full of dead geese.”

Such delicious quips--and Britain’s 11th-hour “pro-democracy” reforms--have alarmed the island’s business community, which believes that Hong Kong would be just fine if the governor would just shut up. Listen to the very opinionated, very rich Ronnie Chan, who runs a big-time Hong Kong development company: “The problem is that Patten is a bull in a china shop, and Hong Kong is a china shop.”

Patten aside, Chan says he’s not worried: “The Communist Party in Beijing doesn’t want to make the mistake that the Soviets made. They know they must create economic progress to remain in power.”

Nicholas Fong, a UCLA student and head of the campus’ 150-member Hong Kong Student Assn., agrees: “Human rights are not a worry. Hong Kong will remain the same after the changeover because China needs its educated populace, strong financial market and stock market.”

Perhaps, but when the British vamoose, Hong Kong will be left to its own devices. Henry Kissinger recently told the Far Eastern Economic Review that America mustn’t get too emotionally involved with the Hong Kong transition issue: “I believe the best assurance is for the Hong Kong population to deal with it as a Chinese problem,” not an international issue. In other words, Hong Kongers, lots of luck.

Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord, the president’s top policymaker for Asia, thinks otherwise: “I respectfully but strongly disagree with Dr. Kissinger. The U.S. and many other countries have huge interests in Hong Kong. Its future is a very legitimate item on our agenda.”

Says Patten: “Hong Kong’s economic success is linked to free elections, pluralism and autonomy. This is why it’s important to draw lines in the sand regarding these issues. Unless we draw lines in the sand now, it will be difficult to make changes after 1997. Inevitably this means we have had to have arguments with China.”

Lord, in an interview this weekend, threw his weight with Patten: “I don’t believe the British governor is grandstanding. He’s genuinely trying to arrange for an orderly changeover.” Of course, the more uncertain things become, the more Hong Kong money will flee to California, already a very popular safe harbor for nervous Hong Kongers.

The truth is that Kissinger, however remorselessly real-impolitik, is right: America won’t intervene. Foreigners, and sometimes Americans, often overestimate the altruism of U.S. foreign policy. Neither we nor the British should mislead our friends in Hong Kong.

You’re really on your own, Hong Kong, that’s why I’m so worried about you. Whether your economic blockbuster of an island remains recognizable after July 1, 1997, depends entirely on whether Beijing stays sane. So, what will it be, Beijing: Stock quotes or the quotations of Chairman Mao?