Chris Patten says Britain has a duty to stand up for Hong Kong against China

As Beijing rips up the rules to stifle opposition in Hong Kong, the colony’s last governor is urging Britain to act.

Former minister and Hong Kong governor Chris Patten in Sydney in 2018. Picture: James Croucher

Chris Patten had to wipe away the tears as the Last Post sounded and the Union Jack was lowered to signal the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

The last British governor of Hong Kong admits that it was a “wrench” to leave the city that he and his family loved and had made their home for five years.

But, as he sailed away with the Prince of Wales aboard the royal yacht he believed that the “one country, two systems” principle that had been enshrined in the Joint Declaration, an international treaty logged at the UN, would be enough to protect Hong Kong’s capitalist economy and its way of life.

In recent days that hope evaporated and his sorrow turned to anger as he saw the Chinese government sidestep the Hong Kong legislature to force through a national security law that would allow it to shut down political opposition.

“What we are seeing is a new Chinese dictatorship,” he says. “I think the Hong Kong people have been betrayed by China, which has proved once again that you can’t trust it further than you can throw it … the British government should make it clear that what we are seeing is a complete destruction of the Joint Declaration.”

Lord Patten of Barnes, a former chairman of the Conservative Party, believes that Britain has been spectacularly naive in its approach to an increasingly expansionist China.

Former prime minister David Cameron and (former cabinet minister, now newspaper editor) George Osborne promised a new “golden era” in relations with Beijing. Lord Patten insists that Boris Johnson must now be much more assertive in standing up to a dangerous and authoritarian Communist regime. “It’s not just Hong Kong. We need to have a review across government and get real,” he says.

“China cheats, it tries to screw things in its own favour, and if you ever point this out these ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats try to bully and hector you into submission. It’s got to stop otherwise the world is going to be a much less safe place and liberal democracy around the world is going to be destabilised.”

In particular Britain has a “moral, economic and legal” duty to stand up for Hong Kong, he says.

“The real danger is that we are entirely limp on this. We have obligations because we signed the agreement … If we don’t have any responsibilities for the people of Hong Kong and their way of life, who do we have responsibility for?” As protests are met with “tear gas rather than political dialogue”, Lord Patten, who is also chancellor of Oxford University, says that some Hong Kong residents with British National (Overseas) passports should be allowed to settle in this country.

“We should be more lenient, we should give them longer periods to stay and work here if they are students. When people are politically threatened we should be much more prepared to let them settle here.” He won’t put a number on it but he says: “Of course, we’re not talking about millions.”

In language reminiscent of the cultural revolution, the Chinese foreign ministry said during the week that Lord Patten would be “pinned to the pillar of shame” for centuries to come and compared him to spit.

The peer retorts that the Communist government is behaving like a “frightened bully” because its attempt to cover up the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak has been exposed. There is no doubt in his mind that Beijing is exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to extend its global power.

“With the rest of the world fighting an epidemic which would have been much less bad if the Chinese hadn’t been so secretive, they are using the fact the rest of the world is focused on that to apply more muscle in the South China Sea, they are rattling sabres around Taiwan.”

In his view Donald Trump has made matters worse with his macho rhetoric and trade war. “You don’t have to say this is ‘the Chinese virus’, you have to say this is a communist problem … The answer to bullying nationalism in China is not bruising nationalism from Washington. An American president should be trying to build alliances with those who feel much the same way rather than give the impression that the president only cares about America … we need liberal democracies around the world to act together.”

In Britain Lord Patten thinks that successive governments have fallen for a myth about the economic benefits of cosying up to China. “We should stop being fooled that somehow at the end of the all the kowtowing there’s this great pot of gold waiting for us. It’s always been an illusion. When I was first negotiating with China, a friend of mine said to me: ‘If the Chinese screw you once, you’re a new friend of China, if they screw you twice, you’re an old friend of China’. We keep on kidding ourselves that unless we do everything that China wants we will somehow miss out on great trading opportunities. It’s drivel.”

There was, he suggests “a romance” about Mr Osborne’s approach. He hopes that Mr Johnson “will take some hard-nosed advice” and “not take seriously any of this baloney that we can somehow make up whatever we may lose in Europe by doing a bit more trade in China.” He was heartened by the report that the Prime Minister wanted to reduce Britain’s reliance on China for vital medical supplies and strategic imports. “I think that makes great sense.”

The government should think carefully about the Chinese company Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s 5G network. “If people argue we should deal with Huawei because they’re just like any other multinational company, that is for the birds: if they come under pressure from the Communist government to do things which are thought to be in Beijing’s interest they will do it.”

With Tory MPs increasingly worried about the growing influence of Beijing, Lord Patten detects a changing mood in his party. “I think it’s becoming more realistic and what’s interesting is that it’s an issue that seems to unite both the right and left of the Conservative Party.”

There is, however, little sign of a shift on Europe. With the country heading for recession, Lord Patten, a Remainer, says the prime minister should request an extension to the transition period – of “a year or two” – to allow time to reach a deal.

“I’d like us to leave in the best possible circumstances and the idea that we can on the back of this coronavirus, which to be charitable hasn’t been brilliantly handled, get a comprehensive free trade agreement by the end of the year,- that’s impossible, it’s not going to happen. Nobody is going to think the worse of Mr Johnson and the government if they ask for an extension. Most people will simply think they’re being sensible.”

The Conservative Party must beware of being blinded by ideology, he says. “We have to ask ourselves whether one of the reasons why we were slow in dealing with [the pandemic] was because we had been so obsessed with Brexit and couldn’t think about anything else.”

Lord Patten, who served in the cabinet under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, thinks that the coronavirus pandemic has exposed flaws in the Downing Street machine. “If this is an example of joined-up, decisive, rebuild from zero, Dominic Cummings-type government, God help us.”

He is not impressed by Mr Johnson’s leadership style. “I feel very sorry for him because this wasn’t the job he wanted when he used to talk as a schoolboy about being king of the world. I’m sure he has many qualities but I don’t think he’s a great details man and he’s also been ill … I hope he’s firing on all cylinders now and isn’t being kept awake by the baby.”

Lord Patten is even more brutal about the prime minister’s top team. “Even the most charitable partisan would not look around the cabinet and think it was of the highest calibre,” he says. “It was chosen partly on the ‘nodding dogs’ principle, people had to be either clearly sound on Brexit or prepared to go along with whatever was the party line. I think there are people of huge ability who are outside.”

As chancellor of Oxford, he worries about No 10’s attacks on institutions including the BBC, the civil service and the universities. “It’s always struck me as being a curious thing for a Tory leader to be so opposed to great institutions which Edmund Burke would have thought were one of the reasons for being a Conservative. It would be a tragedy if even though universities are going to have a tough time after all this is over their autonomy was on the chopping block and the government thought that they should be thrown up in the air and abandoned to markets.”

Cambridge has already announced that there will be no face-to-face lectures next year and Lord Patten says that Oxford is also considering how to open for students while enforcing social-distancing rules. “There are issues about accommodation, about dining together in colleges, about lectures, about one-to-one tutorials, how you manage laboratories, these are all big issues that we’ve got to tackle and we’ve got to do so against a very difficult financial background … we need more money.”

He also insists that the older generation must face up to its responsibilities and not pass the cost of the crisis on to the young.

“Everybody is going to have to pick up the bill but above all people like me who are comfortably off will have to pay more taxes to make sure that a poorer country can manage to dig its way out of this, without hubris, without that self-defeating sense of British exceptionalism which has been so damaging to us. The rest of the world has looked at us in the last few weeks and months without the sort of admiration that I would like to be there.”

The Times