From: mok@pa.dec.com (Charles Mok)
Subject: FarEastEconomicReview: A different style - Interview/Patten
Organization: AHKCUS
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 21:45:50 GMT

Interview/Chris Patten

A different style

Far East Economic Review. October 22, 1992.

Two days after unveiling an important series of constitutional reform
proposals in a speech to Hongkong's Legislative Council (Legco),
Governor Chris Patten discussed his political philosophy with REVIEW
Editor L. Gordon Crovitz and Arts & Science Editor Frank Ching.
Excerpts:

Q: Does your appointment as governor signify a fundamental shift in 
the British position towards Hongkong?

I helped to draft the British Conservative Party manifesto which, of
course, included a statement about Hongkong, and that remains the policy
of the British Government.  But obviously I bring to the job slightly
different perceptions and maybe a different style, and I don't think
that the distinction between style and substance is always as great as
people suppose.

The fact that I'm not a sinologist has been used as a stick to beat me
by one or two pro-Peking newspapers.  Maybe I would be taking a
different approach if I did come from that background, but I think that
openness is a servant of political stability rather than secrecy.  I
think that you have something called a a good relationship which stands 
abstractly and then everything else has to be done in order not to
affect that relationship.

Q: Yet you're dealing with people in Peking to whom that approach is
entirely new.

Well, they must be starting to understand by now that I am enormously
predictable, because I do actually attempt to say what I want to.  It
may be inconvenient, but I think it would be far easier for us to do
business in the political sphere, or when talking about the airport, if
that was recognised.

Let me give you an example.  Ever since anyone suggested that there
might be some political linkage between the airport and constitutional
development, I've made it clear that it's not something I can ever
contemplate.

Q: Would you agree that even if everthing you proposed were acceptible
to the Chinese and passed, Hongkong would not have a democratic
government?

It wouldn't have the same sort of democracy as Westminster.  It would
have a government which was accountable to a broadly based legislature.
It would have, I think, sufficient democracy to help secure Hongkong's
way of life for the future.

Q: You are trying to increase the representativeness of the legislature
while emphasising that this will remain a strong executive-led
government.  But the executive will not be democratically produced.

The chief executive in the [post-1997] special administrative region
would have more democratic credentials, in a sense, than I do, because
he would at least have emerged from a process of broader selection than
I emerged from.  But the chief executive would not be elected in a way
the president of the United States is elected.

Q: Whenever Hongkong people have been allowed to vote they have voteed
for more democracy.  Do you think that your programme allows for enough
participation by elected representatives of the people?

Yes, I do.  I think that the challenge for us is to develop the
legislature so that it can hold the executive to account in a
responsible and effective way.  My gut instinct is that Hongkong people
want increasing democracy but they want it secured in a way which has a
good chance of lasting.  It should be consistent with the Basic Law, and
that's what I've tried to design in certain proposals.

Q: One of the arguments against greater democracy here comes from
businessmen.  Your call for democracy creates uncertainty.  How do you
persuade them that greater democracy would create more stability here in
Hongkong and, therefore, that it would be better for business?

What business needs above all, in the long term, is the certainty of
rule of law - of laws democratically enacted and rooted in the
community.  I don't think multinationals would want to be here if this
was a less free society and the rule of law was constantly eroded.

But I think there are other more immediate practical considerations as
well.  If I had said: "I am going to go to Peking and sooner or later
I'll tell you what we've decided," that would have produced the usual
speculation.  I don't think that sort of politics is good for stability
in Hong Kong.

Secondly, is it more destabilising to try to accommodate, in a modest
way, people's political and democratic aspirations or to block them off?
I think the business community needs to consider those issues, and I
strongly feel that the business community has become a great deal more
sophisticated in dealing with them.

Q: Are you optimistic that Hongkong in 1997 and afterwards will be one
of the more democratic countries in this region?  If so, will that be
because of Hongkong's achievements or because of the lack of democracy
in neighboring countries?

I think that there is a danger of applying a customary Western political
assumption to Asian societies.  I was brought up to believe that there
is almost a mechanistic connection between economic freedom and
political liberty.  This is observedly not the case inm Asia, though I
think that economic freedom in time has political consequences.

There are different sorts of democracy in Asia, but they are all, I
suspect, moving in the same dirtection and all of them are demonstrating
that democracy is not destabilising and that greater democracy helps to
make communities more prosperous.  It helps make a government better
too.

Q: You've come to Hongkong at a time in world history when a great
ideological battle seems to be more or less over.  Would you be happy if
you were remembered, after you left Hongkong, as being the last great
anti-communist?

I'm an old-fashioned Tory, which means that I believe, as [British
statesman and author] John Buchan said, that "politics is an honourable
adventure."

What I am trying to do in Hongkong is an important adventure, but I
don't think it's so much one involving hostility to a particular
political ideology as a commitment to a system of values.  It's the
value system which has near its core the proposition that the average
man and woman are a great deal better than the average.