Does Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last British governor (1992-97), still recognize the same high-intensity, free-wheeling, democracy-craving city he left behind 11 years ago? Or has the weight of Chinese sovereignty crushed Hong Kong’s soul?

He recognizes the place, but with misgivings. “I am disappointed that democratic development hasn’t been more rapid,” he said when touring Asia to promote his new book, What’s Next? Surviving the 21st Century.

“I think that Hong Kong does deserve democracy and will get it,” he told a large audience at Hong Kong University (HKU). Of course, “democracy means more than voting. It’s about a lot of other things too. Some places that describe themselves as democratic aren’t as free as Hong Kong.”

Is real democracy doomed if Beijing insists on deciding who can contest the chief executive’s job? “There are other countries, genuinely democratic ones, with constraints on the sort of person who can stand for the senior office,” Patten said. In the United States, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t run for the presidency because he was born overseas.

“There are restrictions sometimes,” Patten said. “It all depends on whether the restrictions are intended to control the outcome or to ensure the democracy is as clean and open as possible.”

Outspoken Hong Kong legislator Emily Lau asked the former governor if he and other past British rulers should have done more to lay the foundation for valid democracy.

“To be honest and a little defensive, I think we probably did about as much as we could from 1992 to 1997,” Patten said. “I think it’s reprehensible that we didn’t do a lot more much earlier.”

In political reforms later brazenly reversed by Beijing, Patten greatly widened the electoral base for functional constituencies in the Legislative Council. “I tried to make them more obviously democratic by extending the suffrage.... I tried very hard, but my efforts were denounced (by China’s leadership) as the work of the whore of the East.”

Now a co-chairman of the International Crisis Group and of the Anglo-Indian Round Table, Patten remains eloquent and forthright. He served as European Commissioner for External Relations from 1999 to 2004. Now the chancellor at Oxford and Newcastle universities, he once held the same post at HKU.

When visiting at HKU, he warned that the global economic crisis will worsen if governments adopt too many protectionist policies: “Protectionism protects losers. It doesn’t create gainers.

“The result of this financial crisis isn’t the end of capitalism. But maybe it’s the end of unregulated finance.”

Back in the 1930s, protectionism turned an economic slump into a deep depression and led to the rise of nationalism, he said. “Booms go bust, and busts turn into booms. Sooner or later, consumers will start to spend again.”

Meanwhile, economic challenges and the problems linked to climate change “mean that governments need to work more closely together than ever before”.

Climate change most hurts the world’s poorest people. “Water supplies will be much more important to our future than oil,” Patten said. “Many of the largest Chinese cities already suffer from water shortages and drought stress.

“Some people argue that climate change is more dangerous than terrorism. It’s true. Terrorists can’t melt the permafrost.”.




'Democracy means more than voting.'




'Worry about water, not oil,' Patten warns.



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