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Title: East and West: China, Power, and the Future of Asia by Chris Patten, Christopher Patten ISBN: 0-8129-3232-3 Publisher: Random House (P) Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.79 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A great fascinating book, which will go down in history
Comment: Chris Patten has seen and lived things which few other Westerners lived. As the last Governor of Her Britannic Majesty in the former British colony, Chris Patten has not just lived history, but made it. This book therefore comes as an indispensable tool for understanding the political, social and economic change of Hong Kong, China and Asia in the late twentieth century. It is extremely well-written, very long yet concise and pleasant to read, and filled with truly interesting and relevant information - for the expert and the casual reader alike. A wonderful reading for almost everyone.
Rating: 5
Summary: Hong Kong's Best Friend Stays Optimistic About Her
Comment: Last British Governor Chris Patten remains optimistic about Hong Kong's future in this book; as long, he argues as the high degree of personal freedom the Hong Kong Chinese enjoyed under British rule is respected by Peking; perhaps a tall order, given that most of Hong Kong's population is made up of millions of refugees who fled China for the safety of the British colony between the 1950s and the 1980s. Yet it is good to read again the old arguments for decency and fair play that I heard Patten make while I lived in Hong Kong in the 90s. Patten offers many examples of British law and Chinese hard work paying off in old Hong Kong. This book is "the best case scenario" argument for Hong Kong's future. It reminds me of the cool, rational responses Patten would give to the latest strident denunciation from Peking about "colonial oppression"; Patten was for awhile there practically the only voice that would patiently remind China that it was up to Peking to reassure all its millions of citizens who had fled, and perhaps it was time for Peking to reassure all those people it was about to take back. The only thing I feel Patten doesn't play up enough about Hong Kong (I assume to help Hong Kong save "face", so important in Chinese culture) is the fact that any of those refugees who arrived in Hong Kong with marketable skills and talents tended to emigrate further, to the First World, to begin new lives and new careers there; making those who were stuck behind all the more in need of reassurance from China. The book also contains a quite a few personal anecdotes (though not as many as one would wish) about Hong Kong life that allow readers to glimpse the rough underbelly that is so much apart of Hong Kong: my own memories were awoken by the anecdote of the rich Hong Kong Chinese property developers, gambling magnates, and shipping famlies who buy expensive wine but then mix it with fizzy lemonade; the lack of any good bookstores in Hong Kong; the seamy fact of all those Kowloon girlie bars the size of aircraft hangers so popular with Mainland business "coach parties." This is a subtle-polite way to get across that coarser side of Hong Kong that, again, Chinese notions of "Face" do not wish to be talked about when discussing "the Paris of the East."
The book also deftly flushes the old racist arguments of "Asian Values" put forward by Singapore's dictator, Harry Lee Kuan Yew, but a lot of the fire has already gone out of those since the collapse of the "Asian Tiger" economies back in 1997.
A good supliment to this book is Jan Morris's *Hong Kong,* which contains a moving, vivid description of the massive refugee migration which has put such an indelible stamp on the Hong Kong of today; Morris's book also contains a lot about the British, too, back to the earliest (if sordid!) days of mutual interest when British merchants would bring opium to the region and Cantonese merchants would distribute it throughout China, to the vast enrichment of both - a good example in a nutshell of the profitable-yet-roguish aspect of Hong Kong's character from day one.
Another good compliment to Patten's book is Paul Theroux's literary novel of the Handover, *Kowloon Tong,* a great read and a fine depiction of the Hong Kong of that time, highly evocative to expats who lived there but have moved on back to the West, you will find in it aspects and attitudes of Hong Kong people, both Westerners and Chinese that can still be seen today; so accurate it is banned on the Mainland!
Rating: 4
Summary: Auspicious prospect for Hong Kong and Asia
Comment: Written by Christopher Patten, the controversial last governor of Hong Kong under the British colonial rule, East and West is neither a book of memoir nor a hulking self-justification. Patten deftly draws on his experiences as Hong Kong Governor to formulate a number of arguments about Asia, about the conduct and implementation of economic policy, about the components of good governance, and about the relationship between political freedom and free economy.
Natives of Hong Kong would have to agree that Patten had struggled (wrestled with the Chinese leadership) in Beijing) to implement democratic institutions that would ensure Hong Kong's continued vitality and ability to prosper. On the verge of the 1997 handover which casted qualms for political and economic uncertainty in many Hong Kongers, Patten was in an awkward position where he was sandwiched between the Hong Kongers and the Chinese leadership. In several occasions (including this book), Patten stigmatizes the totalitarian system of the Chinese Communist system.
There had been incidences in which Hong Kongers accused Patten of betraying the colony and its 6 million occupants, of surrendering a free capitalist city to the ultimate Communist tyranny, with no negotiation and guarantee of human rights, freedom of speech, and autonomy. In the book, Patten draws on these sensitive issues and struggles to give his readers an up-close-and-personal look of the real Asia, not just Hong Kong, in all of its diversity.
Patten started penning the book back in 1996 and many of the events on which he has drawn in writing this book took place at a time when the Asian (Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong) economies seemed to be climbing like rockets. Stock markets triple-leaped and the number of millionaires tripled overnight. Patten regards what has happened in Asia, despite the recent setbacks, as on the whole exciting, unique, and vital for the region and the world.
Despite many Hong Kongers have dreaded the prospect of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty (which has proven to be worrisome in the recent rally against the passage of Article 23: security and subversion law), Patten sanguinely asserts that the die-hard Chinese leadership, while intending to demonstrate the feasibility of co-existence of Leninism and capitalism, will succeed in preserving a free market and liberal democracy in Hong Kong. So the horses will keep racing, and people will go on dancing, as promised by Deng Xiao-ping. The former colony will propser and remains intact for at least 50 years under the one-country-two-system policy.
Patten further asserts that what has worked for the West has already succeeded in the East, that what took place in Asia (especially in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) in the last thirty years was not disparate to the industrialization of Europe and the United States, only the Asian "little dragons" had evolved so much faster. Finally, Patten provides a global picture of the future, in which free markets and liberal politics sustain one another and attribute to economy prosperity. East and West delivers a personal portrait of Asia and its economic prospect, and how the East and the West come together as a whole in unifying the ideals of policy and economic conduct. 4.0 stars.
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Title: The Last Governor: Chris Patten & the Handover of Hong Kong by Jonathan Dimbleby ISBN: 0751522724 Publisher: Trafalgar Square Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.99 |
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