My Take | Never mind the language, it’s the truth that counts
Obituaries of former deputy Xinhua chief Zhang Junsheng recall his colourful comments on last Hong Kong governor Chris Patten; they should not detract from his wise warning at the time
Old communists had an unfortunate habit of using colourful language when they got mad. Sadly, their denouncements often got in the way of their messages, which could be perfectly valid.
Almost every newspaper obituary of Zhang Junsheng, the former deputy Xinhua chief who has died aged 82, mentions his calling the last colonial governor Chris Patten “a prostitute who wanted an arch erected in her honour as a chaste woman”. It’s an old Chinese saying, in case you are wondering.
Zhang Junsheng: Beijing’s envoy who took aim at Chris Patten
It was the same when Lu Ping, former head of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, died in 2015. Every report faithfully recalled him denouncing Patten as “a sinner of a thousand epochs”. That’s an old Chinese phrase as well!
All this reinforces the subtext that they were communist hacks out to subvert democracy that the great Patten was trying to bestow on Hong Kong as the last act of British colonialism. But drop the crude language, and what they actually warned against was perfectly true.
Patten’s unilateral reform to give more than a million electors a vote in nine new functional constituencies breached the Basic Law, which required “gradual and orderly” democratic development in reference to “the actual situation”.
It was also guaranteed to scupper Sino-British cooperation, sustained against great odds over a decade after the signing of their Joint Declaration. Most importantly, as a purely practical matter, Beijing would simply overturn it come July 1, 1997.
