Having overcome SARS and the East Asian Financial Crisis, Hong Kong is riding high again. Over the last few years, its economy has sparkled like the lights on Victoria Harbor. But it is significant that in a poll of Hong Kong residents, only 41% of respondents declared themselves happy to be "SAR citizens." (Chuang Kung-ju)

After a decade in China's arms, Hong Kong is gradually getting into step with its partner on the Asian stage.

By climbing aboard the juggernaut that is the rapidly growing Chinese economy, Hong Kong has escaped the dark memories of the East Asian Financial Crisis and the SARS epidemic. The territory now promises to rival New York and London as one of the world's three great financial centers.

The ten years since its return to China have shaken Hong Kong awake: The environment is becoming steadily worse. The focus on economic development has resulted in greater social inequity. The territory is struggling to integrate mainland Chinese residents into its society and is having to deal with the resulting frictions.... Post-return, the people of Hong Kong are demanding more and thinking about their place in the world. The territory's days as a colony are fading into memory, but what does it mean to be a Special Administrative Region? How long can Hong Kong keep its "special" status? What does it need to do to remain "special"?

Though handed over to China by the UK, moving from the control of one "exogenous" regime to another, the people of Hong Kong have never sought independence, and have seemed to have little awareness of their own subjectivity. Nonetheless, there are inklings that such a sentiment may be emerging. For example, the 2007 election for the chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), the third since the handover, included the first ever challenger to Beijing's nominee. But what China's takeover of Hong Kong, this city which has repeatedly stumbled and regained its footing, really means to Hong Kongers, takes some effort to discover.

To whom does Hong Kong belong? It's not a question the multi-ethnic gwailo (a Hong Kong term for Caucasian men) residents of the town of Stanley ever ask.

The town of Stanley sits on a peninsula thrust like a dagger out into the Pacific Ocean from the south side of Hong Kong Island. Once home to the first British garrison on the island, a mottled fort still tips the dagger 100 years later. But the town itself has long since given up its defensive posture and now stands with open arms. These days, it is an upscale residential district popular with Hong-Kong-based members of the international managerial class. Cantonese newspapers are a tough sell in this largely foreign enclave, where the most popular television stations broadcast in English, Spanish, French, German, and Hindi.

"You don't read the Cantonese papers or watch the Chinese channels unless you're really bored," says Marc in an English heavily seasoned with a southern French accent. The head of the mergers and acquisitions department in the Hong Kong office of France's Societe Generale, Marc has just been transferred here from Australia.

But boredom is something the gwailo managers that live here have little time for. Marc works out of an office in Central, but also travels to Malaysia, India and the major cities of China on a monthly basis for meetings. Working from the pricey environs of Stanley and Central, he and others like him keep their adrenaline pumping by playing and influencing investment markets in Asia and around the world by remote control.