To Resist Elections Is ‘Spitting in The Wind’ - Chris Patten

Hong Kong Ex-Governor: To Resist Elections Is ‘Spitting in The Wind’ - November 11, 2013, 3:11 PM

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/11/11/former-governor-hong-kong-independence-vital-to-territory-china/?KEYWORDS=chris+patten

Any erosion of Hong Kong’s economic independence could not only threaten its desirability as an international financial center but hurt China as well, the last governor of the former British colony said in an interview, adding it was inevitable that the authorities would have to give residents greater sway over how the territory is run.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal during a trip to Singapore, Chris Patten – who governed Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997 – said the core challenge for Hong Kong had always been to combine its openness with the Chinese success story.

He said he believed that economically literate members of the Beijing leadership understood the desirability of the territory’s special characteristics to investors and corporations, and that any loss of those freedoms would be harmful both for Hong Kong and for the mainland.

“There have been worries expressed in Hong Kong that there has been some erosion of Hong Kong’s independence by mainland agencies and organizations,” Lord Patten said. “I don’t know whether that’s true, but it certainly would be of concern if that was what was happening.”

Lord Patten is currently Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Chairman of the BBC Trust.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration – signed by the leaders of China and the U.K. in 1984 – confirmed the return of sovereignty over Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997, while also agreeing that the territory would maintain its social and economic systems and rights, including freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom to strike.

Earlier this year, the Hong Kong government attempted to block public access to personal information about company directors, while journalists have complained about what they have called increased government secrecy.

The local government last year also tried unsuccessfully to make Chinese patriotism classes compulsory in schools.

According to Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the ultimate aim is to select the chief executive by universal suffrage. Beijing has said that won’t happen before 2017. Until now, the city’s chief executives have been chosen through a narrow election committee largely stacked with pro-Beijing and pro-business interests.

In September, a senior U.K. official earned a rebuke from Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying for interfering in the territory’s politics, after publishing an editorial in a local newspaper in which he urged democratic reform.

There has been some tentative progress since then. Last month, Mr. Leung announced plans to begin consulting the public by the year’s end on how elections should proceed. That will pave the way for the administration to put together an official proposal, which will need to be passed by the city’s legislature and approved by Beijing to be enacted.

Lord Patten declined to comment directly on the potential outcome of that process. But he suggested that further moves in the direction of greater political freedom were merely a matter of time, given that the territory already has many of the characteristics of a democratic society.

“The only thing [Hong Kong] doesn’t have is the right to elect its own government, and sooner or later it will have, because you can’t give people control over all the economic and social decisions in their lives but not allow them to determine who collects their rubbish or how their children should be educated or how their health service should be run,” Lord Patten said. “Anybody who tries to resist that is, I think, spitting in the wind.”

In reflection on his governorship, Lord Patten said his biggest regrets were that the U.K. didn’t take earlier steps to implement parts of the joint declaration, in particular regarding elections, and that it spent too much time negotiating with Beijing on areas that the Chinese leadership was never going to agree to, rather than simply taking action on those points. As governor, he infuriated China by introducing limited democratic reforms, which were rolled back when China gained sovereignty.

Lord Patten also stressed the need for continued ties – both economic and cultural – between Hong Kong and the U.K., as enshrined in the joint declaration.

“The U.K. has interests and responsibilities towards Hong Kong and I don’t think we should ever forget that,” he said.

–Natasha Brereton-Fukui.

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