The Hong Kong Diaries

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The book is a collection of diaries from the last governor of Hong Kong, who is one of the greatest politicians in his time. 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. 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 . 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. Over the next five years he kept this diary, which describes in detail how Hong Kong was run as a British colony and what happened as the handover approached.

His diaries are full of extraordinarily sharp observations, witticisms, and self-deprecating humour. This might suggest that the new volume retreads familiar ground, but it is new in two major respects. 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. Ted Heath, political apologist supreme for China, is a “despicable old bore”, and Geoffrey Howe little better.Eschewing the feathered hat, the uniform and all the other flummery that goes with governing an outpost of the British empire, he plunges into a series of walkabouts, holds public meetings, looks for ways of redistributing some wealth and makes no secret of his sympathy for the democrats. 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. 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.

Lord Patten spent much of his time in Hong Kong struggling against British officials and members of the local elite who believed it was not worth trying to push China to accept more democracy in pre-handover Hong Kong-much less expanding it without China's approval. 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. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Patten's best efforts, Hong Kong became the canary in the mine shaft, showing what happens when the Chinese Communist Party is allowed to get its way. In the course of his diaries, Patten argues convincingly that for Britain or any other country to abandon liberal principles and yield to the Chinese Communist party's demands at every opportunity brings neither political nor commercial benefits.

Even then, Patten’s reforms were carefully calculated to pass through the colony’s executive and legislative institutions. The magnates were aghast, the diplomats shuddered and the Chinese, who loathed such notions, ostracised the governor after one round of talks in Beijing . details his persistent but ultimately failed efforts to secure the continuance of Hong Kong's freedoms .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.