01-DEC-1992
16:40
The Editor The Times
1 Pennington Street
London
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P.03
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sir,
Sir Percy Cradock, one of the last of the 'Decolonising Generation' of Foreign Office Mandarins, misses the point about the struggle now going on between Mr Patten and Peking (1 December). It is not a struggle about the survival of Hong Kong as we know it, or even about the survival of his Governorship. It is about the survival of the political regime in Peking.
1978 (Democracy Wall) and 1989 (Tian An Men) allowed Western eyes a brief glimpse through the cracks of the inscrutable face of Chinese Communism. The momentous events in Europe of the past three years (particularly in Romania) have left the old men of Peking isolated and afraid. In Mr Patten's policies they, correctly, glimpse their own armageddon. I know whose side the Tide of History is on.
The Chinese people have always deserved better political leaders than they have ever got. Hong Kong offers them the opportunity to let themselves gently into the choppier political waters of pluralism - if they will work with, and learn from, the Territory during the period of transition. But suspicion, and preoccupation about losing face, will probably them cutting off their noses to spite it instead.
Yours faithfully,
as usual
have
Charles Haswell
TOTAL P.03
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