Lost in translation? Beijing accuses Chris Patten of 'reckless disregard for the truth'

Beijing's Foreign Ministry representative in Hong Kong has accused Britain's last governor of the city, Chris Patten, of a "reckless disregard for the truth" and "confusing black with white".

It follows Patten's remarks in an RTHK interview during a visit to the city last week in his capacity as chancellor of the University of Oxford.

When asked whether he thought Hong Kong people would ever rule their own city, Patten said: "Yes, I do, and I suspect sooner rather than later …even though democracy, or the advance of democracy, has been given a bad press in the last few years."

When asked how it has gone 30 years after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Patten said: “I think it’s gone pretty well, not perfectly. I’ve always taken the view, as you know, that we should have done rather more before we left Hong Kong to entrench political change and greater accountability.”

In the question-and-answer format on the website of the Office of the Commissioner of the Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong, Patten was quoted as saying "the city's democratic development has been suppressed in the last few years". The statement was only on the Chinese version of the site and not on the English version.

The office's statement concluded: "[The remarks] deserve our vigilance. We strongly oppose the interference of Hong Kong's internal affairs by foreign governments and the related people."