WHEN the Legislative Council passes the first stage of the electoral bill next Wednesday, it hopefully will mark the end of an era of appeasement and secret Sino-British deals which denied Hong Kong people the right to make our own decisions on our own internal affairs.
Sir Percy Cradock, the principal architect of the kowtow policy, recently defended that era in a book serialised in the pages of this newspaper. There is no fury so fierce as the wrath of an Old China Hand scorned, as in the past year Sir Percy has made attempt after attempt to try to sabotage democratic reform in Hong Kong and avoid the condemnation of history for the mistakes he made during the decade in which he shaped London's policy towards Hong Kong.
In his book Experiences of China, Sir Percy describes advocacy of the democracy promised Hong Kong under the Sino-British Joint Declaration as having ''a certain appeal for those not burdened with any responsibility''. Sir Percy - now in retirement in the UK - has overlooked the fact that it is Hong Kong people and their democratically-elected representatives who will stay in Hong Kong and live with the consequences of his secret wheeling and dealing. The excerpts from Sir Percy's book usefully reveal the colonial arrogance and diplomatic urge to reach agreement at any cost, which were the hallmarks of British Hong Kong policy during his long tenure.
So, too, have my own experiences and discussions with Sir Percy. After our successful elections in September 1991, my fellow legislator Lee Wing-tat and I went to London to see Douglas Hurd, Lord Caithness and other parliamentarians. Sir Percy asked to see me alone at 10 Downing Street. At that meeting, I challenged him on the many questionable decisions made by Britain over Hong Kong and he explicated the British position to me at length in an attempt to justify those decisions. In terms of substance, he summed up his philosophy as follows: We, the British, have contracted with China to leave Hong Kong in 1997. So in relation to controversial matters concerning Hong Kong, there is not much that we can do for Hong Kong. In negotiations with China, we can push - but only that far. And when we believe we have reached China's bottom line, we will have to consider whether it would be better for Hong Kong's long-term interest for us to reach agreement with China on that basis - knowing that it is not the best we could give to Hong Kong, but hoping at least that it might continue beyond 1997. The alternative is that there is no agreement, and China could do whatever she likes after 1997. When we the British believe that it is better for Hong Kong for there to be such an agreement, we make it.
In response, I asked Sir Percy two questions. Firstly, on such important matters, why should the decision be made by Britain and not by the democratically-elected representatives of the people of Hong Kong? His answer was: ''Because we are the sovereign.'' Secondly, I asked whether it had occurred to him that his Chinese Government counterparts might also know of his philosophy of only pushing until he thought he had reached their bottom line. He could not answer.
I walked away from that hour and a half-long meeting with Sir Percy feeling profoundly concerned because he seemed really to believe that Hong Kong's future lay only in agreements with China. As Sir Percy sees it, no matter the degree to which China breaches the promises of the Joint Declaration or tramples on Hong Kong's legitimate democratic aspirations, Hong Kong people should just shut up and passively accept China's actions for fear that his friends in Beijing could do worse - a policy of craven appeasement which effectively holds Hong Kong hostage and invites China to issue even more threats in the hope of getting Britain to do as much of Beijing's dirty work as possible before 1997.
My next meeting with Sir Percy was in May 1992, when, according to him, he was on his way to Beijing to say goodbye to his friends just prior to his retirement. He began the meeting by asking me in frustration: ''Mr Lee, how can the Chinese be so unreasonable? Half a year ago, our Prime Minister went to Beijing and signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) over the new airport with their Prime Minister. Under the MOU, the Chinese side has only one month to consider our proposals. But it is now the end of the third month, and they are still sitting on it.'' I said to him: ''Sir Percy, you asked for it.'' He responded: ''Why do you say that?'' And I explained that in 1984, he made a perfectly acceptable agreement with China in the Joint Declaration, promising Hong Kong people that we could rule Hong Kong witha high degree of autonomy. Why did he then enter into this MOU with China - giving up our high degree of autonomy over airport matters at least? If he saw fit to break the first agreement by entering into a second agreement, how could he be so naive as to expect China to honour it? SIR Percy thought for a minute and spoke. ''Mr Lee, it is a great pity that your philosophy on China over Hong Kong does not agree with mine. It is a pity because we have only one test tube and we cannot afford the luxury of conducting two experiments in Hong Kong - one on your theory and one on mine to see which works out better for Hong Kong.'' ''Sir Percy,'' I said, ''you're right. You have been holding that test tube all of these years and see what you have got us into.'' Sir Percy's neat summation of his beliefs that day has stayed with me: his philosophy that Hong Kong - our unique society, our rule of law and way of life - was all a colonial experiment of some kind and only Sir Percy and his Foreign Office Mandarin clique should decide what went into the test tube. Never mind that whenever Hong Kong people have had a chance to vote, they have overwhelmingly selected candidates who ran on a platform of going forward with democracy despite Beijing's opposition. Sir Percyhas always been willing to substitute his own judgment for the judgment of the voters of Hong Kong.