Britain soft on China over Hong Kong crisis, says Chris Patten

Britain is not putting enough pressure on China to stick to its side of an agreement on the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty because it is worried about damaging trade links, the former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten has said.

China took back control of the former British colony in 1997 through a “one country, two systems” formula that allows wide-ranging autonomy and specifies universal suffrage as an eventual goal.

But Beijing said in August that it would effectively screen candidates who want to run for city leader, a decision that has prompted weeks of street protests by pro-democracy activists who said it rendered the notion of democracy meaningless.

David Cameron was criticised by China after saying it was important for the people of Hong Kong to enjoy the freedoms promised to them. But the British prime minister has not directly criticised China publicly and the Foreign Office has not escalated the matter.

Patten told a British inquiry into Hong Kong’s democratic timetable: “When China asserts that what is happening in Hong Kong is nothing to do with us we should make it absolutely clear publicly and privately that that is not the case.

“There has always been quite a strong group in government and the business community which believes that you can only do business with China if you carefully avoid in all circumstances treading on China’s toes or saying anything the Chinese disagree with,” he said. “It encourages China to behave badly that we go on doing that.”

Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong before the 1997 handover, said China’s actions were “spit in the face” of the 1984 Joint Declaration on the conditions under which Hong Kong would be handed over.

“It is amazing that when they say that sort of thing the [British] Foreign Office doesn’t make a fuss – because the Joint Declaration provides obligations on China to us for 50 years. [It] is the Joint Declaration, not the Chinese declaration,” he said.

In September the British parliamentary committee rejected demands by the Chinese ambassador to Britain and the National People’s Congress foreign affairs committee to shelve their inquiry.

Patten criticised the government for not summoning the Chinese ambassador to Britain over the situation and said the British government should have spoken up in June when China issued a “white paper” policy document on Hong Kong underscoring China’s sovereignty and ultimate authority over the city.

He said he believed China’s moves were in breach of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

“Without throwing verbal hand grenades we could actually have made it plain that we thought what was happening in Hong Kong was, to put it blandly, extremely unwise,” he said. “In some ways we may have made it more difficult to resolve.”

Britain should be doing more to help the governments of Hong Kong and China settle the situation, he said, calling on Hong Kong’s leaders to offer more concessions to the protesters to encourage them to back down.