Review
Chris Patten's Hong Kong Diaries review: a momentous record of the end of the British Empire
The last Governor's humour shines through his diary of negotiating the 1997 Hong Kong handover – even when China nicknamed him ‘prostitute’
Chris Patten arrived in Hong Kong in 1992 as the final Governor-to-be with a heavy burden: to decide the “fate of the last (or pretty well the last) outpost of the British Empire”. Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, had already agreed that the Brits could continue to remain in Hong Kong for another 50 years, through a scheme called “One Country, Two Systems” under terms “to be agreed”. This agreement with China was to be negotiated principally by Patten and his team, to be ready by 1997, and would remain in place until 2047.
Patten’s diaries over the next five years describe in detail his day-to-day battles with the Chinese. Hong Kong was the last pillar of empire to fall, but for the first time the British were not giving a colony its independence, but rather handing it over to a foreign country – and a ferociously Communist country at that. This meant we had to leave Hong Kong with honour, and their people safe and sound, governed by the rule of law, with their freedom and way of life preserved as best we could. We could not do what is known today in French as a “Manoeuvre Afghan”.
Patten’s diaries are not recommended for those in search of a “speed read”. They are long, and sometimes one is as tired as Patten must have been at the end of his days of endless meetings with the Chinese. They tell, however, 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 which, at its height in 1922, was the largest the world had ever seen, covering a third of the world’s land and ruling over 459 million people.
At times, the diaries read like a novel, full of good guys and bad guys. Early on, we see “name-throwing” by the Chinese officials who, Patten records, “are becoming increasingly imaginative in the names they call me: sinner for a thousand years, prostitute, triple violator and more. They have clearly been through the Cultural Revolution handbook to find the appropriate language to describe me.”
To the people of Hong Kong, however, Patten is a hero. They turn out in droves to cheer whenever he appears in public (“They were very responsive when I practised my royal wave,” he jokes). He loves them back, and is often seen in town at Chinese restaurants; he is also renowned for his consumption of cupcakes.
The people of Hong Kong realise that he is fighting for their future, for their freedom. Many had risked their lives to escape Red China for Hong Kong. Now, as the 1997 handover approaches, they are fleeing the colony in their thousands, to Australia, America, Canada. Those who can get jobs abroad – doctors, lawyers, ministers, engineers and financial experts. It is a huge brain drain on Hong Kong; even China can see that it is losing its administrative class.
Patten is a keen observer of the city’s contradictions. Hong Kong is a rich city, building a surplus every year of billions of dollars, but the wealth is all owned by perhaps 5% of the population. The other 6 million are poor, some unimaginably so. “The nastiest thing we saw were the hostels for caged men,” writes a shocked Patten in December 1992. “These are little bunks with cages round them which the most impoverished poor people in the community rent for tiny sums.”
One of the most pressing things he needs to agree with the Chinese is a new airport, the old one requiring, in his memorable description, “a pretty exciting flight path... over high-rise blocks of flats and – it sometimes seems – almost through the washing lines”. As the discussions continue day after day, month after month, the tone becomes more aggressive and the outlook for a settlement appears unlikely. Britain’s Foreign Office and a number of British business men in Hong Kong attack Patten from behind, and “sucking up” to China by expressing their discontent with him.
The Chinese, meanwhile, are uneasy that Britain might be milking Hong Kong before they leave – not without reason, as it had been done before, with British firms favoured for government contracts. (Sometimes, in the colonies, the milk flowed the wrong way!)
Slowly, slowly, the things that need to be done, like the new airport, are approved by both sides. The heroes of the book are his wife Lavender, a barrister; Anson Chan, the chief secretary; and old Hong Kong hands like David Ford, who spur him on.
Patten’s diary is the truth as he sees it. He has three adjectives for individuals, depending how he sees their behaviour: “terrific”, “ghastly” or “creeps”. He occasionally goes further with descriptions like “Neanderthal” for these people he rightly sees as traitors.
Over the diary hangs the mystery of whether Deng Xiaoping will survive until the handover. Gossip is rife. “The story is that Deng’s family are busy looking for a cosmetic expert, and not the sort that you need when you are alive,” writes Patten on October 19 1994. “This is thought to have some significance because when Mao died he apparently went green, which caused all sorts of problems when it came to embalming him.” Deng almost makes it, only dying on February 19 1997.
Patten’s sense of humour shines through every day, and he needs it. “Our terrific chefs made sure that whatever was being said about me by Beijing, my morale was not entirely blown away. Inevitably I started to put on weight.” He has a way of adding to finished sentences with a little clip like that, as in “James doesn’t drink … (well not very much).” His chatty style makes the diary an easy read, in spite of its length.
Before Patten and his family left for Hong Kong, his daughter Alice had stood in her childhood room and wept. “I bet you cry in five years’ time when you leave Hong Kong,” Patten told her then. Cut to June 30 1997, and his daughters’ faces, like his wife’s, were “crumpled with emotion and streaked with tears”. The Union Jack was lowered at the residence for the final time, and Patten’s aide-de-camp handed him “the flag, my flag”. After the handover ceremony, Patten walked in the drizzle behind the Prince of Wales to board the royal yacht Britannia, “turning to wave as the band on Britannia played ‘Auld Lang Syne’. And so it ended.”
I was there that day, and when I watched the boat sail away, I thought: “Something very good has just gone.”
Simon Murray was a businessman in Hong Kong in the 1990s. His memoir Nobody Will Shoot You If You Make Them Laugh is published by Unicorn at £25.
The Hong Kong Diaries by Chris Patten is published by Allen Lane at £30. To order your copy for £25, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
