TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 1993
1
THE RT HON CHRISTOPHER PATTEN
GOVERNOR OF HONG KONG
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS CHATHAM HOUSE TUESDAY, 6 APRIL 1993
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Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, let me begin with the more recent event, as you so diplomatically described it. It is pretty well a year to the day since, as all of you who read the newspapers in advance will know, the Conservative Party lost the general election. It is almost a year, too, since, following that election, I was offered and accepted the post of Governor of Hong Kong.
self-centred
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During the next few moments I would like, if possible, to explain to some of you and I hope that this will not seem too
what it is in the interim which has converted someone reckoned in British politics to be, apart from one or two demotic interludes, on the consensual end of the political
argument. I would like to try to explain what it is that
converted this one-time wet into the Dennis Skinner of the
Orient! (Laughter) That is about the one thing I have not been
called thus far!
Let me begin at the beginning. Let me start with what was my initial reading of the Joint Declaration the basis for Sino-
British co-operation: the description of how it is that we are to accomplish our objective of one country, two systems, to refer to that historic concept.
I take it that the Joint Declaration means what it says.
I take it that the Joint Declaration is for real and not just a brocaded frill behind which Britain can withdraw from Hong Kong
in 1997 with a modicum of honour and decency.
That is how I
approached the Joint Declaration, that is how I read the Joint
/DECLARATION, AND