East and West by Chris Patten
Arguments About Asia By The Last Governor of Hong Kong
Chris Patten's book "East and West" is a carefully thought defence of liberal democracy, and an interesting account of his negotations with China.
At the beginning of East and West, Chris Patten warns (or reassures) the reader that it is not a book of memoirs, nor is the a detailed diary of the Last Governor of Hong Kong, nor even is it member of the genre telling tales of “Tiger virtues, Tiger values, Tiger miracles, Tiger futures”. It is a book which discusses “Asia” in terms of markets, governance and “the relationship between political freedom and economic liberty” from an articulate observer who was deeply affected by his time as Governor of Hong Kong.
Large parts of Patten’s book could only have been written by him or those very close to him. There are interesting insights into what it was like to be in the unusual position of a colonial governor preparing relinquish a colony in the full expectation that it would enjoy less freedom under its subsequent government. Patten is not an apologist for the ideology of empire, but he makes clear the high respect he had in practice for some of the administrators of the colony. He is careful not to make East and West a repository for entertaining anecdotes of life in the foreign service, however: when he talks about his time in Hong Kong, it is to discuss the negotiations between the British and the Chinese over the degree of self-government the colony could be permitted, or to examine the reasons for its extraordinary economic success.
A lot of East and West is taken up with exploding what Patten regards as the myths of Asian exceptionalism: the “Tiger miracles” in economics, and the view that human rights and political freedoms aren’t as important to Asian peoples as they are to Westerners. He scorns the idea that there is a set of “Asian values” or “Asian characteristics”, citing the enormous variance in political, economic and social organisation across the region.
Patten is unapologetically and unembarrassedly in favour of liberal democracy: he not only supports it but believes it is the best form and government, and the world would be a better place if all countries were ruled by a recognisable form of it. He spends some time explaining, however, that elections do not make democracy, that freedom of speech is an end in itself, but not an absolute good in practice, that the rule of law is a matter of economic benefit as well as personal security, etc. Patten
In taking on the cultural and moral relativism which suggests that “Confucian” societies don’t have the Western interest in individual rights and freedoms, Patten argues from convincing ground: he quotes a fair bit of Confucius. He also cites conversations he has had personally with the Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng. In his common-sense approach to refuting the myths of “Asian values”, however, Patten so firmly eschews theory that he overlooks some cultural critics who could bolster his argument.
Fed up with the continual carping by the Chinese government bout “Imperialist oppressors”, Patten ignores the fact that the myths he attacks are part of a long-standing construction of “the East” by Western colonialists. Critics like Edward W Said, whose wrote the seminal Orientalism, could go far to explaining how these myths have been so durable, without in any sense exculpating the Chinese government for their human rights abuses. Without this explanation, much of what Patten attacks seems completely baffling, rather than wrong.
