A blinkered but valuable view of Hong Kong

Author: By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff

Date: TUESDAY, October 13, 1998

Page: E5

Section: Living

There is no reference in this book by Hong Kong's last British governor to the vast quantities of opium that his country's traders pushed on the 19th-century Chinese with London's blessing, no mention that the British started wars after which the outmatched Chinese coughed up the grants and leases for Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon Peninsula, and the New Territories at the point of a cannon.

This imperialist history may be well known to diplomats, scholars, journalists, and a few hundred million Chinese, but omission of even a concise summary of it from the book deprives Western readers, particularly young and ahistorical ones, of essential background for evaluating Patten's argument that Great Britain has been a benevolent influence in the region and China has not.

Britain bullied its way into possession of Hong Kong in the mid-19th century for the noble purposes of selling drugs and feeding on a decaying Chinese state. For well over a century, it took no substantive step toward having Hong Kong Chinese participate in governing themselves. Instead, it pushed another opiate: the idea that Hong Kong people were interested in business, not politics.

Readers not schooled in the basic facts still will detect Patten's bias swiftly. His Brits and their Chinese allies are almost unfailingly wise, steadfast, hard-working, honorable; his mainland Chinese are hysterical, noisy, strident, uncooperative. British negotiators are "skilled" or, sometimes, "affable and polished." Their Chinese counterparts are "mulish," sometimes with "a sloppy smile and the personality of a bureaucratic . . . machine."

"We emancipated our empire," Patten writes, implying falsely that the British had a choice in the matter, and his argument that Hong Kong should have been treated like other territories departing from the empire for self-government is hugely flawed. Those other places, especially in Asia, were identifiable realms before the British conquerors came; Hong Kong and the mainland territories on which it depended for its ability to function were part of a great civilization then in severe decline, now resurgent.

All that said, "East and West" is worthwhile on several counts.

For all his biases, Patten opens fascinating windows onto the decade-long poker game between the tired empire of the West and the reviving empire of the East that ended with Hong Kong's reversion to China in mid-1997. For all his defense of Britain generally, he shows how the political expediency and wishful thinking of British leaders in the 1980s left him with few cards to play when the game neared its end. Patten's skillful prose makes "East and West" an easy read.

Perhaps most worthwhile are sections on the future of China, and on the debate over Western values versus Asian values, a debate that has been going on since the rise of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as major economies.

Not surprisingly, Patten feels "Western" values like democracy and the rule of law are in fact universal desires, while "Eastern" values like sacrificing self for family and group are situational and impermanent. Nevertheless, he gives the subject a thorough, thought-provoking airing.

And his assessment of China, though laced with not-too-funny zingers that border on the snitty, is levelheaded. It should be required reading for anyone who fears China could replace the Soviet Union as an evil, expansionist empire, or replace Japan as an economic superpower -- for China is not on course to play either role.

"I should now come clean. It is a grave confession," Patten writes. "I am not scared witless of the People's Republic of China or mesmerized by China's might and majesty. I am on balance more scared of things going wrong in China . . . than of things muddling through or going rather well."

He then proceeds to make a very good case against the argument that China should be left alone because it is no threat; he cites "the arbitrary arrests, the beatings and tortures, the mass executions, the regional repression, the organ transplants of criminals" and many more well-documented abuses of human rights there. It would be a more powerful case, however, if it came from someone who recalled the reality of his own empire more accurately, rather than throwing a casual cloak of benevolence over it.

Patten argues, convincingly, that Britain's tenacious, pugnacious efforts to democratize Hong Kong in the final moments of colonial rule put China on its best behavior there, and that the former colony is better off for this recent history. He ignores the obverse, which seems equally plausible: that China put Britain on the spot, making it impossible for the modern world's champion imperialists to dither, delay, and remain involved when it was time to pack their bags and go.