The Hong Kong Diaries

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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. Because the 2022 polemic is much shorter than the diaries and is also more current, some readers may turn there first. 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. As an insider's account, The Hong Kong Diaries is filled with that daily sense of grappling with a multi-headed hydra . It struck me that in hindsight we had the benefit of some effective political figures, including John Major, during that time - if only we had known it then.

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. 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. In Patten's diaries we see everyone from Mother Teresa to Margaret Thatcher passing through the governor's living room . 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.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. Percy Cradock, former ambassador to Beijing and described as “working actively to scupper what we are trying to do”, is the chief villain of the piece.

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.Indeed, knowing the place - either having visited or lived there - is also required to really enjoy it. Even then, Patten’s reforms were carefully calculated to pass through the colony’s executive and legislative institutions. In June 1992 Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not (as other British colonies over the decades) for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously.

Chris Patten’s appointment as Hong Kong’s last governor in 1992 marked a cultural change for the colony. 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. From reading them, you would never guess how heavily invested British security and intelligence were in Hong Kong.

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. Ted Heath, political apologist supreme for China, is a “despicable old bore”, and Geoffrey Howe little better.

His diaries are full of extraordinarily sharp observations, witticisms, and self-deprecating humour. Patten’s Hong Kong years have been chronicled before, not least by him, while Jonathan Dimbleby’s account of the road to 1997 was based on extensive on-the-spot access during his governorship.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. 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.