SOME understanding of the Chinese language and Chinese literature may make Mr Patten more comfortable, if not more competent.
It is internationally known that Mr Patten has been called a ''prostitute'' by some Chinese critics. He protested in public about the derogatory epithet when he was in England and America, but he did not explain to his audience the metaphor it carried. Perhaps Mr Patten is not aware of it himself.
Actually, the epithet appeared in an article in a Chinese newspaper expressing sarcasm at the idea of a British Governor of Hong Kong purporting to be a champion for democracy, when the British had been ruling Hong Kong without giving the people any democracy for over a century.
The writer had no intention of accusing the British Governor of leading a promiscuous life, or earning his living by providing indecent services. He was using a traditional Chinese saying that describes someone who claims a virtue he really lacks: ''a prostitute who wants to put up a monument for her chastity''. Not a nice comparison, but there is no connotation other than hypocrisy.
I got this explanation from Mr Zhang Junsheng, vice-director of the Hong Kong branch of Xinhua (the New China News Agency) who, besides being a Chinese official and an enthusiastic Patten-basher, is a scholar well-versed in Chinese literature.
Mr Zhang furnished an example to illustrate the subtlety of Chinese metaphors. There is a Chinese saying that when the sandpiper and the clam grapple with one another, the fisherman profits. The saying comes from an old fable and describes the situation where a third party benefits from a prolonged dispute between two antagonists. There is no implication, of course, that one of the contestants is a bird and the other a shellfish.