The Hong Kong Diaries

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Patten's conviction that planting the seed of democracy would make Hong Kong more resilient after the handover to China will long be debated by historians, and this book will be an essential source. Patten's diaries of his frustrating yet rewarding stint as governor cover the years from 1992 to the 1997 handover . 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.

In Patten's diaries we see everyone from Mother Teresa to Margaret Thatcher passing through the governor's living room . Ted Heath, political apologist supreme for China, is a “despicable old bore”, and Geoffrey Howe little better. 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. 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. But he had one supreme advantage – the loyal backing of John Major, the prime minister, and Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, back in London.He also assaults China’s Xi-era view that the 1984 joint declaration, which was supposed to apply until 2047, is now just a historical document of no further relevance. But it is also to be treasured for the brilliant and fierce concluding essay on China's recent crackdown which has destroyed Hong Kong's way of life.

This is true, but British colonial rule did not take such an enlightened position until the handover was imminent. 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 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. It is valuable that his diary entries include views and analyses that were very different from his (some of which he vilified). 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 .Strained relations extended even to his more natural political allies, the Hong Kong democrats led by Martin Lee. 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.

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. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. 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.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 . The book is a collection of diaries from the last governor of Hong Kong, who is one of the greatest politicians in his time. Even then, Patten’s reforms were carefully calculated to pass through the colony’s executive and legislative institutions. For anyone who has a special interest, ties to and direct experience of HK as I have been lucky to have, this book is a must read.

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. The book gives unprecedented insights into negotiating with the Chinese, about how the institutions of democracy in Hong Kong were (belatedly) strengthened and how Patten sought to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue after 1997.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. 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. a terrific tale, one that will appeal not just to Sinologists but to all historians, since it is effectively a record of the end days of an empire . Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer View image in fullscreen ‘The politics, in his words, were a “snake pit”. From reading them, you would never guess how heavily invested British security and intelligence were in Hong Kong.