In July 2022, Chris Patten, the former Governor of Hong Kong, published The Hong Kong Diaries, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the British transferring Britain’s sovereign power of the territory to China.
During a recent event to share his work on the book, Mr. Patten said that Taiwan was a very advanced place in technological development and a free society, just as Hong Kong once was before its transfer on June 30, 1997.
Mr. Patten mentioned that most Hong Kong people fled China during the 1950s and 60s. They came in waves, possibly avoiding the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Great Famine. This was humiliating for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), seeing their people seek refuge in the British-ruled territory.
He pointed out that the Sino-British Joint Declaration was registered at the United Nations. The CCP promised that territory would remain a free and democratic society. Still, after Xi Jinping took power, he saw a free and democratic Hong Kong as an existential threat to the regime — “and I believe they feel the same way about Taiwan.”
The CCP had promised that Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years, called “one country, two systems.” However, the term also applies to the goal of the unification of Taiwan.
The CCP’s destruction of Hong Kong people’s freedom and way of life, plus their many broken promises, had stirred worldwide outrage and controversy. This prompted Mr. Patten to publish the diary he kept during his five years as governor. He said: “The weight of my real diary should be four times the size of the published one.”
In the book, Mr. Patten shows that there are passages in the diary that recorded actions that he did in frustrating situations that, in hindsight, were inappropriate. However, they were eventually retained and not deleted from the final book. This is because they faithfully reflected the tensions that surfaced from time to time as he went through unprecedented events; even if he could return to that time, he would not make any significant changes.
He further reveals in his book: “The only place I have self-censored is in avoiding using real names in certain places, especially against those who are still in Hong Kong and are likely to suffer because of this brutal and despotic communist regime, where even my beloved city is handcuffed and shackled.”
Tsao Hing Shing: Don’t let the tragedy of 21st-century Hong Kong befall the treasure island of Taiwan
UMC (United Microelectronics Corporation) founder Cao Xingcheng, who is based in Taiwan, wrote a forward to the Chinese translation of The Hong Kong Diary.
He said: “The world will always remember July 1, 1997, as the day when the :Pearl of the Orient,: a highly civilized city that had taken 150 years to be nurtured by the British, was annexed by the Chinese Communist dictatorship. Twenty-six years later, the Hong Kong people who value freedom and dignity have fled the city in droves. I hope This incredible tragedy of the 21st century will never happen on the lovely island of Taiwan.”
Cao Xingcheng said that he lived in Hong Kong for most of 2019 and witnessed first-hand the brave resistance of its people against the infiltration of the CCP followers and their barbaric words and actions.
In that instance, he decided never to enter the CCP’s jurisdiction again. He would return to Taiwan as a whistle-blower to warn his fellow Taiwanese that they must not harbor illusions about the CCP. He called for unity to defend Taiwan’s democratic institutions. He is willing to die for this goal and vows not to live to see Taiwan become another Hong Kong.
During the event, the Chairman of the Taiwan Hong Kong Association, Mr. Sampson, questioned Mr. Pattern on how Taiwan could learn from Hong Kong.
Mr. Patten said: “Taiwan is a democratic country of 23 million people and that the ‘one country, two systems’ proposal by the Chinese Communist Party was designed for Taiwan. I hope that the Taiwanese would cherish the values of democracy, the rule of law, and freedom of the press, and I believe that totalitarian dictatorship would not end well.”
He is optimistic about the values that Taiwan contributes to the world and that the Hong Kong people equally believe in. “The current situation in Hong Kong confirms that the Chinese Communist Party is a threat to Taiwan’s democratic and free society.”
Here, he points out that Hong Kong has lost its vitality and a vast number of talented individuals, all due to establishing a police state rule. More than 200,000 people have left over the past two years. Many companies no longer feel they can continue investing in the current environment, so they are moving out.
Mr. Patten says that at the end of his new book, he added a list of key officials involved in the governance of Hong Kong, and London and Beijing’s policies on transferring sovereignty over Hong Kong. A short article at the end briefly describes the events of the last two years in the territory that have finally proven to be the destruction of a free society.
