Some thoughts from the sinner of a thousand years

[TheBrit]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...last-governor/

[DanielFRA]

Unfortunately this very interesting looking article is only available for subscribers. So sad.

[Natfixit]

Brit, could you do us interested non subscriberd a favour and sceenshot the article and post so we Geoexpatters could read it?

[East_coast]

Copy the below within the quotes and paste into the URL line of a browser

"http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J3NMyyUJS2oJ:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/28/explosive-private-diaries-hong-kongs-last-governor/&hl=en&gl=hk&strip=1&vwsrc=0"

[emx]

Interesting read, with this gem at the end:

Sunday 9 March 1994
Despite the row with China, I reckon that we can govern Hong Kong perfectly adequately until 1997 and lock in as many of its liberties as possible. But ultimately, after the handover, much will depend on whether the Chinese Communist Party can actually be trusted to honour ‘one country, two systems’.

[AsianXpat0]

The worst part of the week was a meeting today with two ghastly blokes from the bank Robert Fleming. A lot of what they’ve been saying in private has been played back to me already. They have spent a good deal of the week kowtowing to the NCNA. If they only knew how much derision this causes in the ranks of even the most hard-boiled of Chinese apparatchiks. Apparently, they have even told the Chinese that of course the UK demonstrates some of the inadequacies of democracy and that nobody in Hong Kong agrees with me about elections. What creeps.

Amusingly familiar.

[shri]

https://archive.is/UJlVS

[HSY]

eheh the things that jump out at us so different for each. I was surprised at this:

Chinese officials are becoming increasingly imaginative in the names they call me: sinner for a thousand years, prostitute, triple violator and more

Quite unimaginative, not v rude, polite almost. The officials showed some class .

[shri]

Certainly more imaginative than dotard.

[Corrib]

Thanks for posting, that is really interesting

I like Patten and I agree with a lot of his analysis and views, but I do think he often shows the typical politician's vice of playing the game with his legacy in mind, rather than the common good. I think he over promised knowing that he could not deliver, but instead would go down in history as the sole voice for democracy in HK.

I read Percy Cradock's book "Experiences of China" - he was Patten's nemesis, but his book shows a deeper understanding of China than anything Patten has written or said.

Ultimately everything was agreed when Patten arrived, but it would be interesting to see how he would have performed if he had been involved in Thatchers negotiations in the early 1980s