28th February 2025

In an exclusive interview with Adil Cader of Talking Foreign Affairs, Lord Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong shares strategic insights into the complex intertwining of the past and present actions by heads of Hong Kong and the Chinese communist party which have led to Hong Kong returning to authoritarian control under the Chinese government.

Lord Chris Patten served as the last governor of Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997, overseeing the transfer of Hong Kong back to the Chinese government on July 01st of 1997. Reflecting on his own emotions, along with the emotions of the citizens of Hong Kong regarding the transfer of power back to the Chinese, Lord Patten details the sombre and uneasy feeling shared by all residents of Hong Kong as doubts began to come up around the future of civil liberties in Hong Kong under eminent Chinese control. When asked by Talking Foreign Affairs about his thoughts on Hong Kong’s future under Chinese control, Lord Patten stated,

“I had a certain nervousness about whether what the Chinese Communist Party had offered under a one country to system was going to work.”

Moving past the emotions and actions during the 1997 handing over of power, Lord Patten outlines ways in which powerful western countries must deal with China if they are to successfully control them from exercising authoritarian policies both domestically and internationally. When asked about specific steps which liberal democracies, such as the United States and Australia, can take to maintain economic ties with China while promoting democratic ideals Lord Patten stated,

“We should not try to contain China, but we should constrain China when it behaves badly. When it behaves badly over breaking its word.”

Taking a hardliner approach to the diplomatic relationship with China, Lord Patten argues that many powerful western democracies have been too lenient with China in the past, allowing them to purse unjust international agreements and fostering authoritarian domestic policy. To compensate for this lack of past action, Lord Patten urges countries to consolidate their power and call out China where wrongdoing has been done in order to ensure their tyrannical power is limited in the future.