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Hong Kong Ex-Governor Dubs New Security Law a 'Wake-Up Call'

Jamie Dettmer

   Britain and other Western countries have been naive in thinking they
   can tame China's Communist leaders by "cozying up" to them, says
   Britain's last governor of Hong Kong.

   As protests rage in Hong Kong over a new security law, Christopher
   Patten says successive governments have fallen for a myth about China
   "that somehow at the end of all the kowtowing there's this great pot of
   gold waiting for us."

   "We keep on kidding ourselves that unless we do everything that China
   wants we will somehow miss out on great trading opportunities. It's
   drivel," he told Britain's The Times newspaper on Saturday.

   In an excoriating interview, focused mainly on Hong Kong and the
   Chinese government's decision this week to sidestep the island's
   legislature and to force through a new draconian national security law
   that would allow Beijing to stifle political dissent in the enclave,
   Patten said," What we are seeing is a new Chinese dictatorship."

   Patten, who served in the Cabinets of British prime ministers Margaret
   Thatcher and John Major, and is now chancellor of Oxford University,
   oversaw Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

   He was Britain's lead negotiator in the talks that led to the Joint
   Declaration, an international treaty meant to guarantee political and
   economic freedoms in Hong Kong until 2047. The declaration established
   the principle of "one nation-two systems."

   His intervention came as clamor mounted in Britain's parliament for a
   review of the country's relationship with China.

   British lawmakers accuse China of using the coronavirus pandemic, which
   they say spread globally as a result of Beijing's efforts to cover up
   the initial outbreak, to extend its global reach.

   A newly-formed Conservative group in the House of Commons called the
   China Research Group, is urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to take a
   robust line with China's communist leaders, saying that Beijing's move
   to stamp out political opposition in Hong Kong should serve as a "final
   wake-up call."

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