Why Deng Xiaoping was right

I find it comforting to have some good sense thrown into the patriotism debate - I suppose I should not be surprised that it comes from someone who is dead and that the comments were first made 20 years ago.

Much unstabilising nonsense is being bandied about by people who do not realise the consequences of their immature actions. Since I arrived in Hong Kong in 1963 the place has changed out of all proportion - as has the local meaning of patriotism and democracy.

In those days to be patriotic meant to be loyal to the Queen, and the real patriots were industrialists (like myself) and councillors (now Baroness) Lydia Dunn and Allen Lee Peng-fei and Exco member Chung Sze-yuen, who were striving to make a better life for the three million or so people who lived here. We had important aims and issues like full employment, housing and a reliable water supply. We of course had our radicals like Elsie Elliott and Dr Ding Lik-kiu, but they tended to deal with real issues and were not commandeered by the Falun Gong or the army of Filipino maids who in those days did not exist.

Watching people take sides for and against Hong Kong in the 1966 Star Ferry riots, which were caused by hungry people, and then again in the 1967 San Po Kong riots, which were totally politically motivated, taught me many lessons. Having groups of my workers escort me to and from work through hostile crowds of agitated Red Guard supporters was an experience I will never forget and which young university students will hopefully never experience.

Yes we have done so much better than most people dared to hope. Today when I see how well behaved the People's Liberation Army is in Hong Kong, I get tears in my eyes - the frightening predictions of people like Emily Lau Wai-hing and Martin Lee Chu-ming proved to be so wrong it is almost laughable.

I remember during the period of the so-called 'Four Modernisations' I was more than a little surprised when Deng Xiaoping made a speech in which he said, 'Communism can only survive with capitalist help'. How right he was. And when I crossed at Lowu into China in those early days it was not possible to believe how far we would come. Yet in Hong Kong there are radicals today who pretend that China is the same monster waiting to devour us that it was back then.

I wrote to the Post during the 'one country, two systems' debate saying that China and Hong Kong would be indivisible eventually, and that if Hong Kong wanted to be removed from China it had to be on a 'two countries, one system' concept like England and the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.