China has always occupied a special place in the imaginations of Western women. In the Seventies, feminists conducted an ill-informed love affair with a place where redefining sex roles seemed a priority. But then, as human rights abuses became more evident, disillusion set in. Tiananmen Square crucially changed opinion. By the time Beijing hosted the UN Conference on Women in 1995, Western women viewed it as pure sham. Now, steeped in images of the Dying Rooms and stories of patriarchal repression from Wild Swans, most Western women probably assume the hand-over of Hong Kong to China will have dire consequences for women there.

Take a closer look, however, and the picture is more complex. There is indeed a generation of women who, in the market freedoms and hothouse atmosphere of Hong Kong, have grown economically successful, cosmopolitan and every bit the equal of their male counterparts. But the political rights to match have only recently been conceded from the colonial government.

Film-maker Sze Wing Leong is in many ways typical of this new generation of Hong Kong women. She is young (25), fiercely ambitious and wants to be "free to go anywhere in the world where the work is''. So it is ironic that, for the past three years, her work has not only been in but also about Hong Kong, making a documentary, Riding The Tiger.

The project started "out of interest'' when she and her father, Hong Kong film-maker Po Chi Leong, began to follow the lives of ordinary people in the count-down to Chinese rule. Among them, she says, there is uncertainty but no excessive pessimism. "Most think it's right that Hong Kong should be Chinese, provided it continues to modernise. It's strange being ruled by people who are nothing to do with your origins."

The past indifference to politics is changing, however. "People are starting to see you have to be concerned,'' Sze Wing says. "They are seeing how little the British encouraged political participation.'' One woman who embodies these changes is politician Christine Loh. Her career developed in the wake of Britain's unseemly rush to establish democratic structures before the handover. She became a member of the Legco, the nearest thing Hong Kong has to a parliament. She has since been at the forefront of campaigns to introduce equal opportunities legislation which Britain omitted to introduce there.

In 1995, she campaigned against the inheritance laws in the New Territories district. These laws discriminated viciously against women. On the mainland, the Communists had repealed them years previously; the British had left them intact.

Not surprisingly, Loh is even-handed about which system is more advantageous to women. "People think of China as the place where they murder female babies. But the Chinese Government is now concerned to put this right. People also think women in China are more down-trodden. Again, this isn't really true. Many women are in powerful positions, in politics and business.''

Loh is leader of the new Citizens' Party, which will contest the first elections, promised by the Chinese Government for next June. Professor Elisabeth Croll, author of Changing Identities Of Chinese Women, also argues for a balanced view of China. "Redefining gender roles has been a issue in China for the past 40 years,'' she says. She points out that the single child policy is now confined to big cities; and that Hong Kong will not be affected.

Now women are at the heart of a cultural shift. "Their interests in clothes, jewellery and make-up are symbols of how the Chinese economy is modernising through a new consumerism.'' China's fascination with the already Westernised Chinese woman may turn out to be the most significant gender issue in the handover. China, Croll says, is already looking with admiration to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong woman is a significant icon, her face and fashions dominating images in the women's magazines.

"The Chinese are ambivalent about the Western idea of career women independent of men. The model they look to is from Taiwan or Hong Kong. There the women may be successful and equal, but are deemed more alluring and attractive, more in line with Confucian values.'' Yet the reality is more complex. There are the questions of dismal conditions for women labourers in the Pearl River triangle, of sexual violence, of the servant class, the Filipino women who currently service Hong Kong's professional women.

The Observer News Service

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.