As the decades pass, emotions can cool and attitudes change. And in Hong Kong, the political facts also are quite different from those during British rule of 1971 and earlier years. Thus it is no great surprise that dozens of now-elderly leftwing activists, once hustled across the border to the mainland, are trickling back to the SAR on private visits - thanks to a quiet government policy of rescinding their deportation orders.

Under a now-defunct expulsion law, colonial authorities shipped some 40,000 local residents to China between 1949 and 1971, when the law expired. Their ranks included educators, alleged spies and others who purportedly worked to spread communist political influence at the expense of British rule. They were not convicted of any crimes but were somewhat summarily shipped out of the colony on short notice, and denied permission to return.

It is not known how many of them survive; most of the deportations date back to the 1950s and 1960s. But the SAR administration confirms that since the 1997 handover it has received 111 applications to have expulsion orders rescinded, and so far has approved 46 of them. Without such recision, the deportation orders remain in effect.