''TODAY'
MARCH 1993
Mr P Ashdown
Q
Is the Governor right?
A
Q
Yes, he is right. I was out there just before he made his famous
speech and, funnily enough, made a speech myself just a few days before in which I suggested that he might do many of things
which, indeed, he has turned out to do and I think the judgement
is correct. I think he's paying a price for the fact that we
have seen at least a century of appeasement of the Chinese in
Hong Kong and the Chinese expect the British Government when they represent Hong Kong's interests to roll over on their back and allow the Chinese to have their way. At the end of the day if
that happened the consequence would be that democracy and the
preservation of a basic system of human rights would not exist
after 1997 and then the economic destabilisation of Hong Kong
would proceed at an even exonerated pace from anything the
Chinese can now induce in Hong Kong because people would leave
the colony and go elsewhere.
But some people would say that to a certain extent it's very
easy for a British politician who's going to leave anyway
before 1997 and can go home, to, at this very late stage, take
on China?
A
I think there's some truth in that. But if that was the case
then it does not account for the fact that Mr Patten has and
continues to enjoy a very broad measure of support amongst the people of Hong Kong. You see the point is this. He has
introduced a set of reforms and incidentally Robert Adley who always consistently seems to represent the view of the Chinese Government in these matter is quite wrong. He has stuck scrupulously scrupulously within the letter of the Anglo/Chines Joint Agreement and unless some element of democracy is
introduced before 1997 then most Hong Kong people rightly feel
that there will be no element of democracy after 1997 and if
that's the case then all the brightest and best in Hong Kong
will simply leave as will the money and the destruction of Hong
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