Who Got The Hong Kong Post-1997 Situation right?

[PeterRS]

Earlier today I came across an old Huffington Post article from 2014 updated to 2017. Given the changing fortunes of Hong Kong there were those who forecast a bright future - like the last pre-July 1 1997 Governor Christopher Patten - and those whose crystal balls predicted a much murkier future.

I have made no attempt to to disguise my dislike of Patten, both as a Hong Kong Governor (from 1992)and subsequently as the Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors - a post from which he was fired. I did meet him just once in a very casual setting. He knew nothing about me and my work and he was clearly much more occupied looking around for someone more interesting to chat with. Fair enough. I could never blame someone for that.

No, as I have written before, I resented him for his childishly secret - to all but a BBC TV team which he paid to come to Hong Kong several times to witness his shenanigans -  attempts to find faults in the two documents which Britain and China had jointly signed laying out Hong Kong's future. They made perfetly clear that not a word could be altered without both parties having agreed in writing. Patten set out to embarrass China into putting Hong Kong on to a much more democratic path.

One of those who felt this decade-long faint-hearted attempt at democracy was belated stupidity was a man named John Walden who had been a senior official in the government for decades. As the territory's Director for Home Affairs, he said this -

"If I personally find it difficult to believe in the sincerity of this sudden and unexpected official enthusiasm for democratic politics it is because throughout the 30 years I was an official myself, from 1951 to 1981, 'democracy' was a dirty word. Officials were convinced that the introduction of democratic politics into Hong Kong would be the quickest and surest way to ruin Hong Kong's economy and create social and political instability."

In 1975, hardly anyone in Hong Kong cared about democracy. There was not even a democratic party - finally formed in 1995. It was Patten who, often secretly, encouraged the rise of democracy, and to hell with what China thought. Yet Hong Kong was dependent on China continuing Hong Kong's laissez-faire attitude to politics and its way of life after 1997. Hong Kong people, most of whom had emigrated from desperately poor circumstances in China, were more interested in a roof over their heads, money in the  bank and education for their children. So when Patten unilaterally announced major changes to the Joint Agreements, the Chinese government was as livid as the UK government would have been had the boot been on the other foot. China then cancelled what had been termed the "through train" in terms of how the territory was going to be run and instead installed its own administration. 

But the democratic forces deliberately unleashed by Patten ewere a Pandora's Box. They took root 15 years later in the student body. And as the world knows, even after demonstration and more demonstrations China did nothing. But eventually it could tolerate it no more, as it became obvious that Hong Kong political views were being aired in the mainland. Thus the clampdown of three years ago and the end of democracy in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong which I shall visit again tomorrow is now devoid of the freedoms it once enjoyed and all because one pig-headed man with zero experience of China who should never have been appointed Governor thought he could outwit the old guard in Beijing. He totally failed and thus condemned Hong Kong to a less bright future. In my view John Walden and his government colleagues with similar views was spot on.

[BjornAgain]

I agree, Fat Pang, or the Accidental Governor, only got the job as he lost his seat in the 1992 General election, so John Major as PM promoted him from party chairman to the last governor of Hong Kong. With no Foreign Office or Diplomatic experience, a classic case of 'jobs for the boys'.

[forrestreid]

On 3/7/2026 at 4:18 AM, BjornAgain said:

I agree, Fat Pang, or the Accidental Governor, only got the job as he lost his seat in the 1992 General election, so John Major as PM promoted him from party chairman to the last governor of Hong Kong. With no Foreign Office or Diplomatic experience, a classic case of 'jobs for the boys'.

I think that’s a bit unfair to Patten — and to John Major, for that matter.

The 1984 agreement was mostly put together by the Foreign Office’s old “China hands,” and their main priority was getting Beijing to promise that Hong Kong would stay capitalist after 1997. Democratic reform for Hong Kongers wasn’t something they cared much about. In fact, a lot of them were openly dismissive of the idea of democracy in Hong Kong. Whether that came from old‑school colonial attitudes toward the Chinese or just a general dislike of democracy, who knows — with British colonial officials it could easily have been either.

(And honestly, it is a bit surprising to see PeterRS — who was very keen to condemn the US/UK for toppling Mossadegh in neo-colonialist fashion in 1953 — quoting approvingly a colonial official who thought Hong Kong people didn’t deserve democracy in the 1980s…)

Then Tiananmen happened in 1989, and suddenly the British public realised that Hong Kong was about to be handed over to an authoritarian regime. Newspapers started criticising the 1984 agreement from a democratic and human rights perspective. That created a political headache in London. So when it came time to appoint a new Governor, John Major decided the last one shouldn’t be another career civil servant. The feeling was that the “China hands” had mishandled things by not securing agreement to bring in more democracy back in 1984.

That’s where Patten came in. He was a big political figure, he’d just lost his seat, and he was seen as someone who could push democratic reforms as far as possible before 1997. Sure, there may have been a bit of “jobs for the boys” in the mix — Patten wasn’t as wealthy as most Tories and needed a job — but the decision was political. Major probably didn’t expect him to charge ahead quite as forcefully as he did, but Patten was basically doing what he’d been sent to do.

Naturally, the old Foreign Office crowd and parts of the Hong Kong civil service took his appointment as a slap in the face — which, in a way, it was. So they had their knives out for Patten from the start.

 

 

 

[forrestreid]

I have just realised that I have not answered the question Peter posed in the opening post. I will reflect on that and post on that later.

[PeterRS]

On 3/7/2026 at 11:18 AM, BjornAgain said:

I agree, Fat Pang, or the Accidental Governor, only got the job as he lost his seat in the 1992 General election, so John Major as PM promoted him from party chairman to the last governor of Hong Kong. With no Foreign Office or Diplomatic experience, a classic case of 'jobs for the boys'.

Not 100% true. John Major was clearly keen to offer Patten some kind of promotion for without him he would have lost the election to the Labour Party. He was offered a senior government position. He turned it down. He was offered a key seat in the House of Lords. He turned it down. The only job he wanted was to be Governor of Hong Kong. Yet unlike ALL previous governors, he had no experience of China, spoke no Chinese dialect, had never worked in the Beijing Embassy, and was a politician and not a diplomat. He had one aim and only one aim - to find a way of becoming some sort of hero by finding loopholes in the 1984 and 1990 Agreements by leaving Hong Kong virtually as a democratic state.

5 hours ago, forrestreid said:

I think that’s a bit unfair to Patten — and to John Major, for that matter.

The 1984 agreement was mostly put together by the Foreign Office’s old “China hands,” and their main priority was getting Beijing to promise that Hong Kong would stay capitalist after 1997.

Sorry but again not true - and recall I had been in Hong Kong for five years at that time and knew quite a number of civil servants (indeed, as you may well have - I just do not know). It was, let's also recall, basically only Margaret Thatcher who was determined to get the Chinese to maintain Hong Kong's status quo after 1997. She listened to neither of her two previous governors - the incredibly-wise in Chinese affairs Sir Murray MacLehose and Sir Edward Youde. She listened to none of the senior civil servants from both Westminster - notably Sir Percy Craddock her senior Hong Kong advisor - and Hong Kong (yes, many Hong Kong representatives sat in on those negotiations, including the Governor). Virtually every one was perfectly well aware that the Chinese under Deng would never accept her proposals. Thatcher came out of those negotiations with some egg on her face.

In 1979, my first year in Hong Kong, there was water rationing. Then Hong Kong turned north to China who agreed that a pipeline be built to channel to Hong Kong all the water it needed from Guangdong Province. When Deng Xiao Ping told her to her face that China would have Hong Kong returned as mandated in law come hell or high water and could at a switch turn off 90% of Hong Kong's water, Thatcher idiotically proposed that the Hong Kong government would just convert oil tankers to water tankers and have them sitting in Hong Kong harbour.  Yes, she really said that!

At a media conference in Hong Kong after her last visit to Beijinig, she spouted a number of outright lies and poor Sir Edward Youde had to crrect her "version of discussions"! One senior Hong Kong civil servant, Barrie Wiggham, told me that Deng was adamant. Nothing Thatcher said moved him. She was left gutless having initially promised that Hong Kong would remain in British hands.

Yet - and this is key - in 1984 there was no Democratic Party in Hong Kong and only a handful individuals speaking out about the need to establish democracy before 1997. 

5 hours ago, forrestreid said:

(And honestly, it is a bit surprising to see PeterRS — who was very keen to condemn the US/UK for toppling Mossadegh in neo-colonialist fashion in 1953 — quoting approvingly a colonial official who thought Hong Kong people didn’t deserve democracy in the 1980s…)

And that, with all respect, is a total non sequitur. In both cases i wrote the truth. I do condemn the USA and Britain for much of their colonial deeds. The CIA getting rid of the PM of Iran is one thing. I did certainly believe that Hong Kong people did not seek democracy for they had never in their lives known what democracy meant! Almost 90% of Hong Kong citizens had emigrated from China's one-party state. But I never used the word "deserve". I was quoting a long-time senior civil servant of the territory. Surely that was obvious. Why therefore is that "surprising"? It isn't.

5 hours ago, forrestreid said:

That’s where Patten came in. He was a big political figure, he’d just lost his seat, and he was seen as someone who could push democratic reforms as far as possible before 1997. Sure, there may have been a bit of “jobs for the boys” in the mix — Patten wasn’t as wealthy as most Tories and needed a job — but the decision was political. Major probably didn’t expect him to charge ahead quite as forcefully as he did, but Patten was basically doing what he’d been sent to do.

But again you have made an innaccurate allegation. Few senior figures in Westminster wanted democracy for Hong Kong when Patten was appointed, apart from Douglas Hurd, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth and Foreign Affairs. Yet, according to Hansard, the official record of statements in the House of Commons, he had stood up in parliament and stated on July 1 1992 in a reply to a member about the increase in the number of elected members of the [Hong Kong] Legislative Council in the 1995 elections as agreed with the Chinese -

"We have said that we shall discuss the 1995 elections with the Chinese, with the aim of ensuring as much continuity as possible."

Note the word "discuss". Patten never discussed anything with the Chinese government. Further, the formal agreements with China already ensured an increase in directly elected members so that 50% would be directly elected by 2003. That is all in writing in agreements lodged not only with the United Nations but in Chinese law. The intention of both parties was that there be a "through train" so what was in place on 30 June 1997 would continue after 1 July 1997, the sole exception being that the Chief Executive of Hong Kong would be a Hong Kong citizen. Most British civil servants, the legal profession, the police etc. would remain in their jobs.

As stated by Sir Percy Craddock, the Chinese government negotiators in 1989 had made clear that any unilateral attempt by Britain prior to 1997 to change the agreements regarding any increase in democratically elected seats in the Hong Kong legislature would result in the Chinese scrapping the agreement to increase directly elected seats to 50% and instead would impose their own conflicting arrangements. If that happened, Britain could do absolutely nothing about it. In other words, there was a procedure in place to increase democracy in Hong Kong substantially. But Patten's ham-fisted and unilateral non-discussions killed it!

It has been said, although I have to add I can find no official writings about it, that John Major was incensed not only at Patten's changes but at the devious way he had gone about them. He tried to recall him back to London twice, but Patten refused. Major and many in his government were concerned, understandably, about the effect on Anglo/Chinese trade once Britain had broken its agreed promises on Hong Kong.

The irony really is that very few in Hong Kong (well under 5%) had any interest in democracy after the signing of the Joint Agreement in 1984. As Sir Percy Craddock wrote in an April 1997 issue of Prospect magazine -

All who look beyond the headlines will wonder why Britain, with its long and rich experience of China, should reserve its biggest mistake for the last act of the play.

[PeterRS]

Probably the biggest issue rarely discussed is why Britain agreed in 1898 to a 99 year lease on the New Territories which accounts for more than 90% of Hong Kong's land area. After all, it had first been granted Hong Kong island and then the Kowloon Peninsula as far as Boundary Street in perpetuity as a result of the Opium Wars. By 1898 the Qing Dynasty government was in a far weaker position and the British were on their doorstep. Why did the British sit back and accept a lease rather than insist on the New Territories being also granted in perpetuity? We'll probably never know.

[forrestreid]

My point about the difference between your championing of Iranian democracy and lack of interest in it in Hong Kong is that one presumes that if you think democracy is good in one situation one would expect that you would be in favour of it in theory in another, even if there was not a huge clamour for it,

I am far from an expert in HK but a brief perusal of Wikipedia informs me that in 1986, a multitude of local groups set up an organisation called the “Joint Committee on the Promotion of Democratic Government” which collected 200,000 signatures in a petition to speed up proper elections, so it was certainly in the air in the 1980’s.

Then in 1995, in the elections the Democratic Party swept the board in the geographical seats. I think it is fair to say that the demand for democracy was building in the 1980’s and that Patten’s democratic programme was hugely popular among the actual HK electorate in the 1990’s.

Regarding my background in Hong Kong, five days in the city state on holiday is my only practical experience of it. I was in my teens in Ireland in 1989 and I followed the news of Tiananmen and the subsequent debates over Hong Kong with interest in the British and Irish media until 1997. That gives me a particular perspective I guess. I think that those whose views were formed after 1989 tend to foreground the democratic question in Hong Kong more than those whose views were formed earlier. 

Regarding your comment that Major wanted to sack Patten twice. Well, maybe so, but the fact is that he didn’t, despite the fact that Patten held his job “at Her Majesty’s pleasure”. Presumably Major preferred dealing with the blowback of Patten annoying the Chinese by pushing forward with democratisation rather than having to justify to the UK parliament (and, after 1995, the pro-democracy majority in the HK Legislature) why he was replacing him with a more pro-Beijing figure.

[forrestreid]

To finally get to your question, of who got the situation right, I would nowadays say Patten.

As it happens, that would have not always have been the case.

My evolution went from being very positive about Patten early on, to coming around reluctantly to what you might call the Percy Cradock line by 1997. I felt that while Patten was well-intentioned, that a more softly-softly approach may have worked better, and that bringing in more democratic arrangements that the PRC would scrap as soon as they gained control was pointless.

In those days I would have been more optimistic ( or naive ) about China as well, swallowing the establishment Foreign affairs line that once they joined the WTO etc they would slowly become more democratic and liberal.

However, as I saw the fate of Hong Kong in the 25 years after 1997, I came to understand that Beijing never intended to let even the small spark of democracy survive indefinitely, and would eventually scrap it once it became too troublesome.

In retrospect, I realise that Patten did the right thing to try and create a temporary bit of democracy in HK, even if the PRC were going to squash it. He may have not had much experience of China before his appointment, but he had the insight to realise that (to paraphrase Churchill) you cannot negotiate with a tiger. He at least created  a memory of a democratic Hong Kong in the Nineties that will endure as a memory of the British period, as Hong Kong slowly loses status and declines from being a major international city to just being another Chinese city.

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, forrestreid said:

I am far from an expert in HK but a brief perusal of Wikipedia informs me that in 1986, a multitude of local groups set up an organisation called the “Joint Committee on the Promotion of Democratic Government” which collected 200,000 signatures in a petition to speed up proper elections, so it was certainly in the air in the 1980’s.

Agreed. But you have to be clear about to which body elections referred. The Urban Council of Hong Kong (the name given to the City Council) was open to elections by an extremely limited electorate decades before the 1980s. In 1970 there were effectively 200,00 ellgible voters. Rules were eased and thereafter eligibility reached almost half a million in 1981. But Hong Kong people had absolutely no interest in elections. How many actually voted? Only 34,381!. I defy @forrestreid and anyone else to state this indicates an unequivocal interest in the introduction of democracy by a majority of the people.

Note that the democratic groups @forrestreid refers to were set up in 1986 - two years AFTER the signing of the Joint Declaration. The movement was led by a handful of public figures but not at all popular at the outset. Indirect elections to a very limited number of Legislative Council (effectively Hong Kong's parliament) seats were then established. Once again, voting numbers were miniscule partly bcause of the limitations placed by the government on who could vote. It was only in 1991 - before Patten -  when direct elections with very few restrictions on electors were introduced for a larger number of Legislative Council seats. This was far from any kind of universal franchise but it was a start. The government still held a majority of seats.

Britain had by this stage become very nervous about China's intentions. Following the Tiananmen Square incident in June 1989, roughly 200,000 protestors marched through Hong Kong streets. This greatly displeased China. A new airport was planned off Lantau Island to replace the outdated Kai Tak airport, but under the terms of the Basic Law, China had to agree to the cost. This along with its surrounding infrastructure was estimated at somewhere around US$20 billion. China was relucant for Hong Kong to commit so much, despite the city having the world's third largest foreign exchange reserves. The old guard in Beijing had another reason for suspicion about Hong Kong's handling of its reserves. The Joint Declaration made it clear that these would be kept in Hong Kong for use by the government after 1997. Several Beijing lawmakers feared that as Britain left its former colony, it would find a way of transferring these funds to London. These were serious concerns which resulted in a fear of Britain's intentions.

It took intense diplomacy to ensure that China's concerns were set aside and the airport construction got the go-ahead. Within Hong Kong, though, many had become nervous after June 1989 in Tiananmen Square and many senior professionals moved their families to Vancouver, Sydney and other cities. Ironically, as it became clear that China would leave Hong Kong alone after 1989, several new recruitment companies were set up to lure these professionals back to Hong Kong in more senior positions, while leaving their families overseas. These were fondly called "astronauts" and there were many tens of thousands of them!

So Patten arrived in Hong Kong after a period of major discontent on both sides had finally seemed to be settled. It is true that the newly formed Democratic party won a majority of seats in the 1991 election. Fear of China had come to the fore and this enabled Patten to go about his duplicitous plan. Produced in absolute secrecy even from many of his masters in London, once announced Beijing was furious. And rightly so, given the promises both sides had made about consultations with and agreement by both parties if there was to be any change to the terms of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. China then did exactly what it said it would do - tear up the "through train" agreement and put in place its own legislative body. That was entirely Patten's doing, and anyone who disagrees with that has clearly not read the terms of the two Agreements.

As I continued to live in Hong Kong for another four years and then returned for business virtually monthly for another 15 years, like many I believed China would live up to its obligations under the Agreements. Little actually changed, other than many more Chinese tourists visited the city. All the freedoms Hong Kong had enjoyed, including legal ones, continued. Indeed, Hong Kong thrived. But the Pandora's Box opened by Patten was only temporarily closed. In 2014, students especially were unhappy that the territory's Chief Executive would not be open to universal suffrage but only to a small group of electors chosen by Beijing. That started the umbrella movement which closed a major central motorway for three months and led to the destruction in the Legislative Council Chamber. A major disobediance campaign had started, one which I felt was bound not only to anger Beijing but to lead to some form of reprisal.

There is no doubt that the students, as students tend to do in many parts of the world when they believe they have a serious grievance, went way too far. Remember Kent State University when the US National Guard killed demonstrating students during the Vietnam War? Unfortunately there were no voices of reason to temper their protests and point out the possible consequences. These took time, but we now know that Beiing used these and other protests to clamp down on Hong Kong people ruling their own affairs and killing democracy. This was all a result of Patten and his utterly selfish and idiotic plans for the installation of democratic systems. He is a man who believes totally in his own self-importance - as was later proved when he had to be fired as Chairman of the BBC. Making him Hong Kong's last Governor was a monstrous mistake by Prime Minister John Major. As I quoted in my previous post, Sir Percy Craddock was correct, "Britain reserved its biggest mistake to the last Act of the Play." And Britain has just sat back and done nothing but mouth platitudes when it is one of the two parties to the Agreements. John Walden and his colleagues were totally correct in saying "the introduction of democratic politics into Hong Kong would be the quickest and surest way to ruin Hong Kong's economy and create social and political stability." He is being proved correct.