When British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd travelled to
Beijing two weeks ago, he said that it was to take the message
to Chinese leaders that the Sino-British negotiations on the
arrangements for the 1994-95 elections must yield an agreement
soon. I have travelled to London with Mr. Yeung Sum, the Vice
President of the United Democrats, this week to meet British
Government officials and to tell them that as far as the people
of Hong Kong are concerned, no agreement with China is better
than a bad agreement with China.
Governor Patten arrived on the scene twelve months of
Chinese invective ago. Prior to his arrival, Beijing had been
fully conditioned to believe it could obtain whatever political
concessions it wanted from a British Government locked in a
perpetual kowtow. In particular, China was determined to assume
a veto power over all major decisions in Hong Kong before 1997
and to ensure that all future matters would be discussed
bilaterally between China and Britain, leaving no place for the
Hong Kong people to help decide their own future.
After an impressive beginning in which he sought to listen
to local opinion and respect the right of the people of Hong Kong
to have a say over their own future, Mr. Patten now seems to have
reverted to the old colonialist pattern of secret diplomacy in
which the people of Hong Kong are kept completely in the dark
about their own future. In light of the great expectations that
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