The apparent restraints on both sides have fostered a more friendly atmosphere for their 16th round of talks in Beijing next week.

An anonymous British source was even quoted as giving the forthcoming session more than a 50 per cent chance of succeeding.

Residents have been riding on a political roller-coaster since the negotiations on the pre-1997 electoral arrangements for Hong Kong started last April.

The fact that China agreed to engage in such negotiations has given rise to widespread optimism that the Sino-British row could soon be resolved.

The positive mood had diminished as the more than 120 hours of bilateral meetings failed to produce any concrete results. Some Beijing-appointed Hong Kong Advisers, who were optimists at the beginning revised their stance and started portraying likely scenarios after the talks collapsed.

It remains to be seen how pundits and politicians will adjust their outlook in response to the latest turn of events at Downing Street.

But the uncertainties stemming from the lengthy negotiations have obviously made it difficult for the mainstream pro-China elements to act in concert.

Cultivating a uniform outlook among their supporters on major issues has been a crucial communication strategy of the Chinese Communist Party, but it has proved difficult to achieve as far as the campaign against the Governor, Mr Chris Patten, and his reform proposals are concerned.

In order to prepare for a head-on clash with the British, Beijing earlier decided to bend the Basic Law a bit and established a Preliminary Working Committee for the future Preparatory Committee (PWC) for the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (SAR).

That working committee was soon perceived to be the most powerful within the ranks of its four different pools of counsellors in Hong Kong - members of the PWC, National People's Congress, Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, as well as the Hong Kong Advisers.

Local members of the National People's Congress are supposedly the highest ranking Chinese public office holders in the territory. The 28 delegates are not only advisers to the Chinese Government, but legislators of the entire mainland.

But they have never assumed a really prominent role in local politics, lest they compromise the authority and credibility of the Hong Kong Government.

The underlying assumption, however, has been challenged by the emergence of the Preliminary Working Committee.

If the two countries cannot come to a consensus on electoral reform for Hong Kong, the working group would immediately have to take up an active role in charting out a contingency plan for the transition of sovereignty in 1997. The committee has thus be dubbed the second power centre, though Beijing has repeatedly dismissed such suggestions.

The PWC, comprising 30 Hong Kong members, attracted far more media attention than their counterparts from the Chinese parliament. Apart from the director of Xinhua (the New China News Agency), Mr Zhou Nan, only five other NPC members from Hong Kong have been selected for the PWC, where most of the actions will take place.

During their monthly gathering earlier in the week, the local NPC delegates agreed that they should also study the issues relating to the run-up to 1997.

They even asked for more secretarial back-up to enable them to study the issues. While the delegates insisted that as legislators they would have to tackle the transition related topics sooner or later, their involvement at this stage is bound to make the scene more confusing.

The delegates stressed their move was not meant to undermine the Government's authority. It appears to be closer to the truth that the NPC delegates themselves have felt their role being overshadowed by the PWC members.

The political sub-group of the PWC was supposed to have put on their agenda discussions on how to form the first SAR legislature, when they met in Beijing last week.

That item was later dropped as members agreed that they should not complicate the Sino-British talks while they were still in progress.

But during the week, individual members offered their ideas on how to prepare for all possibilities.

Professor Lau Siu-kai, for instance, floated the idea that an interim legislature could be formed in 1997, if the one elected under the Hong Kong Government was not acceptable to China.

An interim assembly, he surmised, could prevent any chaos arising from a legislative vacuum. That view has been backed by legal experts in China as within the jurisdiction of the working group.

Miss Liu Yiu-chu, who serves both the NPC and PWC, however, denounced the proposal as inappropriate.

Meanwhile, some legal experts on the PWC recently also elaborated on why the future Preparatory Committee is entitled to decide whether individual Legislative Councillors in Hong Kong have committed subversive acts.

Mr Wu Jianfan, a mainland member, argued that it did not have to rely on the courts to make the political judgment on who had failed to meet the subversion criteria.

Yet a Hong Kong PWC member, Mr Tsang Yok-sing, more recently suggested that ''subversion'' after all might not be an objective criteria.

The conflicting messages from the Chinese appointees have been so confusing that some politicians, who have not been co-opted into the Chinese camp, have demanded that China should clarify who among its proteges are authorised to speak.

The demand is unlikely to be met. But after the current Sino-British rift is resolved one way or another, the public might have a better idea about who among the Chinese nominees are better informed than their colleagues.