FORMER Governor Chris Patten, whose China-bashing book East And West is published tomorrow, may find life a little lonely when he visits Hong Kong to promote it next month. Not only is there no question of Tung Chee-hwa meeting him but even Chief Secretary for Administration Anson Chan Fang On-sang is expected to keep her distance. Mrs Chan had been expected to meet Mr Patten. One local paper even reported the two would 'chat about old times together'. But it has now emerged that she is likely to avoid such a politically embarrassing encounter by being conveniently out of Hong Kong at the time. Although it has yet to be announced officially, Mrs Chan is to be the keynote speaker at the annual Trade Development Council dinner in London on October 27, so providing the perfect excuse for her absence. Nor is it clear whether relations between the two are all they once were. Mrs Chan was infuriated by revelations of her disagreements with Mr Tung by Mr Patten's scribe, Jonathan Dimbleby, in his book, The Last Governor. The extent of her anger is apparent from the lengths Dimbleby, at Mr Patten's urging, has gone to make amends in a little-noticed addition to the recently published paperback edition. 'Her friends and admirers [among whom Patten is to the fore] feel that I have been ungenerous in highlighting occasional moments in her career which appeared to me, and to others, to place a small question mark over her enthusiasm for democracy and open government,' he writes, denying Mr Patten told him anything about her differences with Mr Tung. 'Not only was he entirely loyal to his senior lieutenant . . . but he never spoke to me about her except in laudatory and affectionate terms.' So far senior civil servants have remained remarkably reluctant to criticise - even in private - the boss they served so loyally for five years before the handover. But such loyalty will be stretched to the limit by his new book's strident attacks on a central government that is now their ultimate boss. It will be instructive to see how many follow Mrs Chan's lead in finding excuses for not meeting Mr Patten (Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen is already planning several overseas trips next month). In the SAR, the book's admission that 'Hong Kong deserved better of Britain' will go down well, especially given the long-standing resentment about London's disgraceful behaviour over nationality issues. As the book acknowledges, this may only be stating what everyone has long known to be true: 'It was a sad way to go. And I fear that the people we left behind know it.' Nonetheless, it is the first time anyone involved in the colonial era has conceded such a self-evident truth. While Mr Patten may have his own motives for doing so - not least to discredit those who ruled Hong Kong before him - it is a significant admission for which he deserves some credit. The same cannot be said for the book's juvenile prescription for dealing with China. In a self-justificatory tone, Mr Patten sets out to elevate the way he (mis)handled Beijing to the status of an art form. He advocates rationing red-carpet receptions and scrapping high-level trade missions from Britain, such as those which caused him so much trouble during the Court of Final Appeal row. It is schoolboy-like behaviour which can best be summarised as 'if someone is rude to you, then be rude back'. That is something almost everyone has sometimes wished to do when China was being particularly bloody-minded. But the fact that no one has ever seriously attempted to pursue such a strategy, however tempting, speaks volumes for how useless it is in the real world, as a basis for ties with a country that constitutes a quarter of the global population. However hard Mr Patten seeks to deny such an interpretation, the basic thrust of his book is that he has got it right when it comes to how to deal with China, while everyone else in the world - with the possible exception of a few US Congressmen - has got it wrong. And such a self-serving argument surely says more about Mr Patten than it does about Beijing.