The world knows that HK is well developed under the leadership of British government, but China people has one sentence: If not China, HK died.

In The Hong Kong Diaries Chris Patten details his struggle as the last governor of Hong Kong to energise the dying days of British rule.As an insider's account, The Hong Kong Diaries is filled with that daily sense of grappling with a multi-headed hydra . The book gives unprecedented insights into negotiating with the Chinese, about how the institutions of democracy in Hong Kong were (belatedly) strengthened and how Patten sought to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue after 1997.

With hindsight, ex-governor Lord Chris Patten revisits his custodianship of Hong Kong in this genuine recollection of his encounters with the Communist regime. Chris Patten’s appointment as Hong Kong’s last governor in 1992 marked a cultural change for the colony. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Unexpectedly, his opponents included not only the Chinese themselves, but some British businessmen and civil service mandarins upset by Patten’s efforts, for whom political freedom and the rule of law in Hong Kong seemed less important than keeping on the right side of Beijing. Patten’s goal was to ensure the 1997 handover to China went as smoothly as possible, while at the same time entrenching the rule of law and trying to extend democracy.He was Governor of Hong Kong from 1992 until 1997, Chairman for the Independent Commission on Policing after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and European Commissioner for External Relations from 1999 until 2004. Unexpectedly, his opponents included not only the Chinese themselves, but some British businessmen and civil service mandarins upset by Patten's efforts, for whom political freedom and the rule of law in Hong Kong seemed less important than keeping on the right side of Beijing. Strained relations extended even to his more natural political allies, the Hong Kong democrats led by Martin Lee. Because the 2022 polemic is much shorter than the diaries and is also more current, some readers may turn there first. Over the next five years he kept this diary, which describes in detail how Hong Kong was run as a British colony and what happened as the handover approached.

Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer View image in fullscreen ‘The politics, in his words, were a “snake pit”. From reading them, you would never guess how heavily invested British security and intelligence were in Hong Kong. The book concludes with an account of what has happened in Hong Kong since the handover, a powerful assessment of recent events and Patten's reflections on how to deal with China - then and now. This takes the form of a passionate polemical essay, written as a postscript to the diaries, about China's increasingly brutal sabotage of the Hong Kong deals.It struck me that in hindsight we had the benefit of some effective political figures, including John Major, during that time - if only we had known it then. Patten's conviction that planting the seed of democracy would make Hong Kong more resilient after the handover to China will long be debated by historians, and this book will be an essential source. This might suggest that the new volume retreads familiar ground, but it is new in two major respects. details his persistent but ultimately failed efforts to secure the continuance of Hong Kong's freedoms . The book is a collection of diaries from the last governor of Hong Kong, who is one of the greatest politicians in his time.