The Hong Kong Diaries

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You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Patten has now published his diaries of five tumultuous years in office, from 1992 to 1997, recording battles against the comrades, the tycoons, the doubters in the cabinet and mandarins everywhere. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. 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 . 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.The magnates were aghast, the diplomats shuddered and the Chinese, who loathed such notions, ostracised the governor after one round of talks in Beijing . 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. The honest opinion of his observations over the Hong Kong populace is carefully crafted and one could be easily moved by his love towards the Pearl of the Orient after reading. It is valuable that his diary entries include views and analyses that were very different from his (some of which he vilified).

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. 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. Strained relations extended even to his more natural political allies, the Hong Kong democrats led by Martin Lee. 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. 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.But he had one supreme advantage – the loyal backing of John Major, the prime minister, and Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, back in London. 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. 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. From reading them, you would never guess how heavily invested British security and intelligence were in Hong Kong. His style occasionally stumbles into overly long sentences which can make his point or observation hard to decipher.