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Chris Patten, The Hong Kong Diaries

London: Penguin, 2022
Andrew Yu
Bibliographical reference

Chris Patten, The Hong Kong Diaries, London: Penguin, 2022.

Full text

1Twenty-five years after Chris Patten left Hong Kong as its last governor, following the handover to China, his legacy is still being debated. For many Hongkongers, especially the younger generation, Patten has done an honourable thing by emphasising the importance of liberal democracy and bringing political reform to Hong Kong. Many “China Hands” in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and officials in China still hate Patten, as they believe he has damaged the relationship between the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China. For the Chinese Communist Party, Patten is a “sinner for a thousand years”.

2The book begins with the 1992 British general election. Before this, Patten served as a member of the British House of Commons for 13 years and held some key positions in Thatcher’s and Major’s governments, including Chairman of the Conservative Party – a position responsible for the election campaign (note that he was not the party leader). Despite the landslide victory in the general election under his direction, Patten was one of the few Conservative MPs to lose his seat due to Labour’s strategic voting against Conservative governance. If re-elected, he would have become the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as John Major’s confidant.

3After Chris Patten lost his seat in the House of Commons, John Major gave him two options. The first was to be appointed as a minister by advancing to the House of Lords. The second option was to be the Governor of Hong Kong. For the first time, these two options offered by Major to Patten after the general election, particularly becoming the Governor of Hong Kong, have been made public in The Hong Kong Diaries. Maybe this was God’s grace – if Patten had become Chancellor, his political career would have been destroyed on “Black Wednesday” in the coming September, when the Pound Sterling was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. In the event, Norman Lamont was appointed Chancellor in 1992.

4After a short vacation, Patten soon took over as the Governor of Hong Kong. Unlike his predecessors, Patten was the only Governor of Hong Kong who believed in Roman Catholicism and who was not from the military, the colonial office, or the Foreign Office. Instead, Patten was a senior British politician with a flair for public relations, which aroused suspicion in both Peking and Hong Kong. Patten did not receive any honours of peerage or knighthood, nor did he wear the traditional colonial uniform and feathered hat when he took office. Nevertheless, he had the loyal support of Prime Minister John Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. It needs to be explained why Patten had strong support from John Major. Apart from their friendship and political views within the Conservative Party, they also shared a common hatred for Sir Percy Cradock, the former British ambassador to China.

5For the benefit of Britain, civil servants at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have long given more weight to China’s interests, especially those with a background in sinology. A remarkable representative of these diplomats was Sir Percy Craddock, the British chief negotiator in the Sino-British negotiations. Craddock’s appeasement of China in 1984 was seen as a significant failure and betrayal of the people of Hong Kong. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Craddock was the first senior British official to visit China, hoping to maintain the much-criticised Joint Declaration. In 1991, after a dispute between Britain and China on the Hong Kong Airport Core Programme, Craddock’s relations with John Major deteriorated and forced Major to visit China, making him the first Western leader to do so after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Fed up with the compromising attitude of Craddock and the then-Governor Sir David Wilson, who was also a diplomat with a background in sinology, Major eventually replaced both in 1992, appointing his Conservative ally Chris Patten as the last governor.

6Patten’s book shows that he was well aware of the competing interests in Hong Kong, China and Britain when he took office in 1992. Hong Kong people expected a governor who could speak for them, as their voice was excluded in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. After he came to power, Patten immediately made the government more accountable by introducing the Governor’s Question Time in the Legislative Council (similar to Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons) and relinquishing the right to preside over the Legislative Council. Patten also carried out substantive democratic and electoral reforms by abolishing appointed seats in Legislative, Rural, Urban, and District Councils, expanding voting rights and lowering the voting age to 18. The Chinese Communist Party reacted angrily and soon set up a preparatory committee to appoint a new provisional legislature to take power after the handover.

7The Hong Kong Diaries largely explain why the Chinese Communist Party vilified Patten. Patten understood the Chinese Communist Party’s distrust of him. However, he did not expect that the British business community and some British officials would have such high opposition to his government. Patten’s diaries contain many difficult accounts of his dealings with some well-known supreme apologists for China like Sir Percy Craddock, Sir William Purvis (chairman of HSBC), and even some senior British politicians such as Edward Heath (former Prime Minister) and Geoffrey Howe (former Foreign Secretary). After Craddock retired, he became a traitor because he joined the pro-Peking camp and became one of Patten’s most prominent critics, calling Patten an ignorant and stupid idealist. In 1993, Craddock contacted the Chinese Communist Party privately to undermine Patten’s democratic reforms but did not report to the British government; Sir William wanted to defend the Communist Party for HSBC’s business in China. Even today, British companies in Hong Kong, like HSBC and Jardine Matheson, still stand on the side of totalitarianism to defend Peking and blame Hong Kong demonstrators for fighting for democracy and freedom when Hong Kong people face China’s suppression.

8In addition to rich political records about Patten in Hong Kong, this book also has a lot about his personal life in Hong Kong. For example, the story of now-member of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg, a young man who often visited Government House, and Patten’s love for Tai Cheong Bakery’s egg tarts. Of course, his wife and three daughters are central. The Hong Kong Diaries is an essential first-hand source for understanding the political developments in Hong Kong in the years leading up to the handover, especially as many government documents have not yet been declassified.

9Twenty-five years on, and as the global order has grown more complex, these diaries bear witness to Patten being far more visionary than many politicians in Britain at the time. Britain has failed the people of Hong Kong for most of its history; The Hong Kong Diaries is a reason worth proving that we in Britain should not let the people of Hong Kong down in the future.

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References

Electronic reference

Andrew Yu, Chris Patten, The Hong Kong DiariesRevue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XXIX-1 | 2024, Online since 29 March 2024, connection on 09 December 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/11837; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rfcb.11837

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About the author

Andrew Yu

School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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