On Sunday, Hong Kong will hold an “election” for its top post. Only one candidate is approved by Beijing to run, and ordinary Hong Kong citizens do not get to vote.

Contrast this with the Hong Kong of 1923. On a brisk morning, Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern China who led the overthrow of the country’s last dynasty in 1911, revisited the University of Hong Kong, his alma mater. Surrounded by students curious about where his revolutionary ideas originated, he said he felt as though he had returned home because Hong Kong and the university were his intellectual birthplace. It was the young British colony that taught him the ideas of liberty and good government.