CONFIDENTIAL & PERSONAL
7. Perhaps most damaging of all, in terms of public perceptions, is the growing suspicion (not entirely unfounded, of course) that the Governor may not, after all, really want talks; and that his preference would be to press on with the legislation as quickly as possible. Only a minority are ready to believe that this may in fact be tactically the best course of action, given that talks are likely to fail anyway. Most would prefer to place their hopes on talks: many would not easily forgive him if he closed the door a third time. Some would swallow the thesis that he had his own political agenda, and that this was not Hong Kong's.
8.
It is of course grotesquely unfair that significant sections of the community should now be disposed to take at face value the claims of a regime whose intentions for Hong Kong after 1997 are at best unclear and at worst highly sinister. But in their present mood people are ready to believe what they want to believe about China, all the more so because the Chinese have so far conspicuously stopped short of inflicting the sort of lasting damage on Hong Kong's economy that they are capable of. The reaction is perhaps not unlike the relief and elation that a small boy would feel when learning that his parent was not after all going to take the belt to him.
9.
It is therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion, which some of us have always feared to be the case, that when the chips are down Hong Kong people prefer a quiet life to confrontation; that while approving of democracy they will always put their own livelihood first; and that martyrdom carries very little appeal for any but a tiny minority.
10.
But the existence of this bedrock of essentially Confucian attitudes does not mean that the community is yet fully reconciled to its post 1997 destiny. People are ready to acquiesce in it, but not to opt for it or to assume direct responsibility for it. That, it seems to me, is why the community (and LegCo) would much prefer it if HMG (or HKG) could take the difficult decisions on their behalf. The ideal posture for Hong Kong would be to let HMG/HKG work out a compromise with China which delivered Hong Kong from disaster, and then condemn the deal as a sell out. Livelihood and conscience intact. Jonathan Mirsky put it a different way to Tony this week: the Hong Kong community like sitting on the fence, and Chris Patten has knocked it down.
CONFIDENTIAL & PERSONAL
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