The Hong Kong Diaries

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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.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 . Patten’s most withering comments are reserved for Sinophile diplomats in London and for visiting former politicians, many of whom viewed Patten with disdain.

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. With hindsight, ex-governor Lord Chris Patten revisits his custodianship of Hong Kong in this genuine recollection of his encounters with the Communist regime. 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.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. In Patten's diaries we see everyone from Mother Teresa to Margaret Thatcher passing through the governor's living room .

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. 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. 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. The book concludes with an account of what has happened in Hong Kong since the handover, a powerful assessment of recent events and Patten’s reflections on how to deal with China – then and now. 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.There were serious ructions with China along the way, and some within Hong Kong itself, about the new airport, passport rights, civil service pensions, Vietnamese refugees and, more than anything else, Patten’s reforms. details his persistent but ultimately failed efforts to secure the continuance of Hong Kong's freedoms . The book is a collection of diaries from the last governor of Hong Kong, who is one of the greatest politicians in his time. From reading them, you would never guess how heavily invested British security and intelligence were in Hong Kong. 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.