From: mok@pa.dec.com (Charles Mok)
Subject: Newsweek: The 'God' of Democracy
Organization: AHKCUS
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 21:37:36 GMT

Copyright 1992 Newsweek
The 'God of Democracy' by Steven Strasser
November 23, 1992 US Edition pg. 42-3

        The Communist rulers of China have called him a "clown," an "immature
politician" and a would-be " god of demcoracy."  Last week Chris Patten, the
spirited British governor of Hong Kong, took more fire when an influential
business group in the colony condemned his plan for democratic reform.  The
businessmen urged him to stop provoking Beijing and get back onto the "through
train" that will return Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997.  The business
broadside heated up a debate over the transition to Chinese rule and Patten's
outspoken role in it.  Why is he taunting the dragon?  Is he threatening the
territory's future prosperity for the sake of Western ideals that are alien to
most Chinese?  Or is he the best hope for installing a measure of democracy
before Hong Kong is swallowed up by the mainland?
        Patten is Hong Kong's 28th British governor and probably its last.
His immediate predecessors were Foreign Office mandarins, cautions civil
servants who took pains not to annoy Beijing.  Patten, 48, is unapologetically
a politician.  Formerly an M.P. and head of the Conservative Party, he has had
only two years of foreign experience, as parliamentary under secretary for
Northern Ireland.  He was the prinicipal architect of Prime Minister John
Major's come-from-behind electoral victory last April, but in the process
Patten lost his own seat in Bath.  Major sent him to Hong Kong.
        WARD BOSS: By WEstern standards, Patten's plans for the 6 million
people of Hong Kong are quite modest.  He wants to drop the voting age from 21
to 18 and give tne public a bit more of a voice in choosing the 1995
legislature.  He insists that his proposals were born in street markets and
meeting halls, where he has been campaigning like a ward boss since taking
office last July.  Beijing fears that Patten is allowing a deadly virus to
spread.  Sine the Tiananmen uprising in 1989, China has tried to lock out
Western politican ideas even as it seeks Western trade and market reforms.
"Hong Kong is our window on the world," says a Beijing economist.  "But it's
also the government's front line against Westernization."
        Patten replied that Hong Kong has joined the list of Asian countries
in which prosperity has created legitimate demands for power-sharing.  "For me
to spend the next five years resisting every pressure from people in Hong Iong
for a rather larger share in their own government would run the risk of
producing exactly the sort of turmoil that we all want to avoid," he told
Newsweek.
        After he announced his plan last month, Patten his the streets to
publicize it, holding meetings, declaiming in the press and turning up on
television almost nightly -- taking his case to the people like an American
presidential candidate.  That style used to be unheard of in a British
govenor, but he claims it suits the times.  "Public policy-making produces
better results when those results have to be explained to people." he says.
His supporters admire his willingness to take on Beijing.  "You have to stand
up to the Chinese at some point or they will walk all over you," says the head
of a major Hong Kong firm.  "Patten is relentlessly reasonable, but he has put
them off balance."
        He also has offended them.  Chinese officials are still fuming over
the governor's toast to the People's Republic at the Oct.1 National Day
festivities in Hong Kong; Patten didn't bother to mingle and failed to clink
glasses with Beijing's top respresentatives.  "That's the first time in
history a Hong Kong governor has been so rude," says a Chinese editor.
Patten's glib dismissal of China's criticisms as "background music" only
increases the irritation.  "Things like sacrasm don't go over well with
Chinese officials," says University of Michigan Sinologist Kenneth Lieberthal.
        As his admirers see it, Patten has artfully interpreted Britain's
agreements with China on the hand-over of the colony.  Singapore's crafty
Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew says Patten has been "very imaginative about
increasing the depth of democracy- very ingenious." China thinks the governor
has pulled a double cross.  The dispute centers on Hong Kong's Legislative
Council.  Beijing has agreed that 20 of its 60 seats can be filled by direct
elections in 1995.  Now Patten suggest that directly elected local officials
make up the committee that is to choose 10 additional members.  And he wants
to broaden the base of the "functional constituencies" -- including
businessmen, teachers and other groups -- that are to fill the remaining 30
seats.  The result: all 2.7 million working people in Hong Kong will
effectively have a vote.
        His plan is popular in Hong Kong.  Three weeks after he announced it,
59 percent of the people surveyed by one newspaper said Hong Kong should press
ahead with the reforms, even if China objected.  In a more unusual telephone
survey, conducted by Hong Kong's South China Morning Post across the border in
the mainland cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, 56 percent of those who
responded favored Patten's reforms.  Almost 97 percent of the Chinese citizens
said they knew of Patten, while only 67 percent had heard of their own
provincial governor.
        China helped Patten boost his name recognition with its shrill
personal attacks.  Beijing also exerted intense private pressure.  A source in
teh Legislative Council says all 60 members were approached by Chinese agents
and told that if they voted for Patten's proposals, they would lose their
posts in 1997.  Beijing also pressured the thousands of Hong Kong businesses
that trade with the mainland.  "The calls have been going out reminding people
that although Patten may be gone in 1997, they will have to stay," says a
former Chinese official who now lives in Hong Kong.
        Beijing's campaign paid off when the influential Business and
Professionals Federation came out against the reforms.  "To run the rist of
developing a political structure which will be dismantled in four and a half
years' time is just not acceptable to us," said Vincent Lo, chairman of the
group.  Beijing wants Hong Kong's magic economy to keep on performing while
politicall passions are dampened.  "The party leaders know that democratic
steps need to be taken in Hong Kong," says the former Chinese official.  "But
they want to be in charge of those step."  Beijing also knows that many Hong
Kong Chinese do not want all-out democracy.  "The Chinese people don't like
politicians," says the chairman of a major holding company.  "Whatever party
wins, its attitude is always, 'I got 51 percent-- I'm God'."
        CULTURAL PRIDE: Patten insists that his reform ideas were not "brought
with me but made here and created out of the dialogue I had with community
leaders and political leaders.  I suspect that's why they are still getting
avery strong support in the public-opinion polls, whatever the criticisms."
He says Chinese can feel proud of their own culture and still "take a rather
strong view about wanting to pull more of the levers in their own lives."
        Rather than link Hong Kong's future to the stagnant socialist regime
in Beijing.  Patten wants the colony to develop its own new brand of
democracy.  After hours of emotional debate last week, the Legislative Council
voted its genderal approval of his reforms by a vote of 32 to 21.  The key
votes on adopting his proposals may not come until March, and China will keep
on exerting pressure, at least for compromises.  But Patten argues that HOng
Kong's jittery days wre behind it and that the colony will be able to dabate
its future calmy and sberly.  He may be right.  Since he unveiled his reforms
early last month, through all the thunder from Beijing, Hong Kong's stock
market -- the most reliable measure of civic order in town -- has kept on
climbing.
From: yuk@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Yuk Lun Chan)
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 11:58:17 GMT
Subject: Re: Need software to read big5 files on PC
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, CCSY Messaging Centre, UK.