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SCMP Reporter

IF BEIJING is looking for a target in its war of words with Jardine Matheson, an obvious candidate would be Sir Charles Powell, roving emissary for the territory's biggest hong.

  He has already raised the ire of China's leadership by supporting Governor Chris Patten's political reform package and now represents the public face of another historic adversary, the Jardine group.

  The former foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in Hong Kong to orchestrate the announcement that Jardine Matheson was de-listing in Hong Kong - a delicate mission given the political tensions in the territory.

  Dubbed ''Mr Fix-It'' by the British press, he handled himself with characteristic aplomb, insisting the de-listing was ''no drama''. According to Sir Charles it was a matter of regulatory detail rather than a statement about Jardines' future in the territory.

  The territory's oldest and biggest trading hong would continue to increase its activities in Hong Kong and China, he said.

  The words fell on stony ground among the territory's sceptics.

  Jardines' efforts to gain a special exemption to trade its shares in Hong Kong while remaining outside the local takeover code had failed and it was taking the next best option.

  Sir Charles was a key player in attempting to broker a deal with the Government for special status. It may have been with this in mind that he was brought in to Jardines in 1992 after a glittering eight years as Lady Thatcher's right-hand man on foreign affairs.

  With his contacts and experience, Jardines would gain an entree to the highest levels of politics virtually around the globe. His experience would be invaluable in trying to improve the hong's historically strained relations with the Chinese authorities.

  But the apparent failure to convince the Government to grant the exemption to Jardines has raised speculation in the territory that his own position with the hong is in doubt.

  The Keswick family, which controls the group through a family shareholding, is said to be less than amused at the way the world has turned. Not only have they failed to convert the authorities here to their way of thinking on de-listing but Jardines' relations with China are probably as bad as they have ever been.

  However, suggestions that Sir Charles' well-groomed head is about to go on the block are instantly and vigorously denied.

  ''There's nothing in it at all. It is a malicious rumour,'' he said in Hong Kong last week. ''I know the Keswicks well enough to know whether there is any truth in it. I'm very confident about my position.''   To those who know him well the response is not surprising. The man once dubbed the ''real deputy prime minister'' is not someone normally found on the defensive.

  Jardine Matheson chairman Henry Keswick had been a long-time admirer of Sir Charles and snapped him up when he decided to turn his back on politics after his years with Lady Thatcher and a few months with Prime Minister John Major.

    The son of an RAF vice-marshall, he was the eldest of four brothers, all of whom have shone in their chosen careers. His brother Chris is chief executive of advertising agency BMP, another sibling is a director of computer firm ICL, while another followed him into the Foreign Office.

  Sir Charles chose the diplomatic corps after gaining a first in modern history at Oxford and was posted to Helsinki, Bonn, Washington and Brussels during a fast-track rise through the ranks.

  The turning point in his career came during the Lancaster House discussions on the independence of Zimbabwe where he caught the eye of Lady Thatcher. Although new to the Prime Minister, Sir Charles had already made a name for himself in Washington as an unusual operator.

  As private secretary to the ambassador in the early 1970s he learned to bypass the Foreign Office in opening back-door relations between the Edward Heath government and the Richard Nixon administration.

  In 1984, Lady Thatcher took him from the Foreign Office and over the following eight years he became one of her two most trusted advisers, the other being press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham.

  Apart from his professional links with Lady Thatcher, Sir Charles and his wife Carla also became close personal friends with the Prime Minister, a friendship that still endures.

  According to Sir Charles, the 1980s saw the ''world come to our door'' as a succession of Western and Eastern leaders came to Britain.

  He came to be regarded in the Kremlin and the White House as a key figure in international politics, more important to the Prime Minister than her Cabinet ministers.

  Critics called him Lady Thatcher's butler while others saw a partnership of a powerful and intuitive politician and a fixer with the skill to smooth her path and get things done - a parallel some have drawn with his new employer.

  Despite being a mover and a fixer behind the scenes, his public image was one of the dutiful civil servant, always at the side of the Prime Minister but never speaking publicly.

  The enjoyment he gains now from speaking out is almost tangible. The ''monastic'' silence of his time at Downing Street has given way to a highly accessible public face. SIR Charles wasted little time in showing his hand when he joined Jardines. He publicly praised the Governor when Mr Patten unveiled his political reform package in October 1992 and is said to have enraged Beijing further by helping draft a speech for Lady Thatcher supporting the Governor's stand.

  Beijing responded by accusing Jardines, without mentioning it by name, ''of rendering a helping hand to anti-Chinese elements who are politically hostile to China . . . the company craves nothing short of chaos''.

  In his role as ''fixer'' for the Jardines group Sir Charles' reach has also extended to Malaysia where the arms-for-aid scandal involving British aid in return for defence and engineering contracts has hurt British trading interests.

  Sir Charles, who is also a director of Trafalgar House, the 30 per cent Jardine-owned British construction company which is jointly building the Pergau Dam, has acknowledged handling the paperwork for the aid programme but insists he was never actively involved with it.

  The British Government gave GBP234 million (HK$2.7 billion) in aid to the Malaysian Government to build the dam, despite advice from senior civil servants that it was a ''bad buy''.

  Sir Charles has defended himself against wrongdoing but the issue is still being probed and unlikely to go away.

  Likewise, Jardines' growing split with Hong Kong will remain a sensitive area and one in which Sir Charles will need to rely on his immense armoury of diplomatic skills if he is to survive in the fabled Noble House.



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