Britain wanted Hong Kong to have a democratic government. China wouldn't let them.
> documents recently released by the National Archives in Britain suggest that beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly sought to introduce popular elections but abandoned those efforts in the face of pressure by Communist Party leaders in Beijing
That was only because they could no longer keep Hong Kong and the handover was inevitable.
Britain also tried to stop Portugal from giving the people of Macau citizenship so they wouldn’t look as bad when they didn’t give citizenship to the people of Hong Kong.
> documents recently released by the National Archives in Britain suggest that beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly sought to introduce popular elections but abandoned those efforts in the face of pressure by Communist Party leaders in Beijing
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/asia/china-began-pu...