The Hong Kong Diaries
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When MP for Bath (1979-92) he served as Minister for Overseas Development, Secretary of State for the Environment and Chairman of the Conservative Party. Patten’s Hong Kong years have been chronicled before, not least by him, while Jonathan Dimbleby’s account of the road to 1997 was based on extensive on-the-spot access during his governorship. Indeed, knowing the place - either having visited or lived there - is also required to really enjoy it.
It struck me that in hindsight we had the benefit of some effective political figures, including John Major, during that time - if only we had known it then.It is valuable that his diary entries include views and analyses that were very different from his (some of which he vilified). Because the 2022 polemic is much shorter than the diaries and is also more current, some readers may turn there first. This takes the form of a passionate polemical essay, written as a postscript to the diaries, about China’s increasingly brutal sabotage of the Hong Kong deals. Here are some remarkable snippets: “I am going to have to go on making the distinction between what so many rich people think is all right for Hong Kong and what they want for their own families. In The Hong Kong Diaries Chris Patten details his struggle as the last governor of Hong Kong to energise the dying days of British rule.
But the governor’s frustration with much of the business elite, anxious only to kowtow to Beijing and go on making a lot of money, was almost as great.His diaries are full of extraordinarily sharp observations, witticisms, and self-deprecating humour. minutely observe[s] how China broke its promises - first insidiously and gradually and then openly and suddenly - and the impact on the lives of Hong Kongers . p. 317); “The sins of blimps in blazers at the Hong Kong Club, now retired to Gloucestershire or Scotland with their millions, are going to rebound on us. However, the nature of communist wouldn’t change and the fate of Hong Kong has already been written before the handover.
There is an inescapable poignancy to reading this diary in 2022: it is a snapshot of a unique moment at the end of empire, and a now fading picture of an extraordinary society that flourished in its brief moment of freedom. Unexpectedly, his opponents included not only the Chinese themselves, but some British businessmen and civil service mandarins upset by Patten’s efforts, for whom political freedom and the rule of law in Hong Kong seemed less important than keeping on the right side of Beijing. In Patten's diaries we see everyone from Mother Teresa to Margaret Thatcher passing through the governor's living room . Patten’s most withering comments are reserved for Sinophile diplomats in London and for visiting former politicians, many of whom viewed Patten with disdain.With hindsight, ex-governor Lord Chris Patten revisits his custodianship of Hong Kong in this genuine recollection of his encounters with the Communist regime. Sadly, many world leaders are still trying to turn a blind eye to tyranny as they naively think shaking hands with them will favour world economy. His predecessors had mostly been diplomats or administrators – Patten was a senior UK politician with reforming ambitions and a flair for public relations who aroused suspicion in both Beijing and Hong Kong. Nonetheless the sheer amount of hard work and effort he and his staff in HK put in to ensure the handover went as well as it did is to be applauded.
details his persistent but ultimately failed efforts to secure the continuance of Hong Kong's freedoms . The world knows that HK is well developed under the leadership of British government, but China people has one sentence: If not China, HK died. Patten’s goal was to ensure the 1997 handover to China went as smoothly as possible, while at the same time entrenching the rule of law and trying to extend democracy. Percy Cradock, former ambassador to Beijing and described as “working actively to scupper what we are trying to do”, is the chief villain of the piece. Patten's diaries over the next five years describe in detail his day-to-day battles with the Chinese .
Strained relations extended even to his more natural political allies, the Hong Kong democrats led by Martin Lee. the diaries themselves, kept from the time of his appointment in April 1992 to the handover just over five years later, have not been seen before and make for consistently good reading . His style occasionally stumbles into overly long sentences which can make his point or observation hard to decipher. The trade and investment statistics he cites from the final decades of British rule do indeed suggest there is little correlation between grovelling and real rewards for business. Ted Heath, political apologist supreme for China, is a “despicable old bore”, and Geoffrey Howe little better.
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- EAN: 764486781913
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