Hong Kong

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. When my noble friend Lord Patten of Barnes was Governor of Hong Kong, he achieved two things. First, he focused the eyes of the world on Hong Kong so that, if it were ill treated or the “one country, two systems” agreement were interfered with, it would be headline world news. Secondly, he taught the people of Hong Kong the basics of politics, how to express and advocate what they wanted and to stand up for themselves. Recent events have shown that both lessons have been learnt.

Democracy can be most soundly built if it has good foundations and is then constructed brick by brick. On the whole, attempts to offer countries our pattern as a ready-made kit instantly applicable have been a disaster, often leading to anarchy or dictatorship. The foundation for democracy in Hong Kong was the joint declaration enshrined in the Basic Law. It is important to remember that a majority of local citizens identify themselves as Hongkongers rather than Chinese. That proportion is growing: Hong Kong University does a poll on this twice a year and has shown that since 1997 the proportion has grown from 60% to 67%.

This of course reflects the most important of all the facts about Hong Kong: it is a true international financial capital, the third most important after London and New York. China is lucky enough to have that international capital. I emphasise that, although Shanghai is the undisputed commercial capital of China, that is very different from being a financial capital. Shanghai is decades away from being so. There are many reasons for that, but the paramount one is the rule of law and the supremacy of an independent and incorrupt judiciary, which China does not have but Hong Kong does.