香港总督换人：卫奕信下、彭定康上

 1991年，中国通过对南方的开放以及对香港资本和管理的接纳，开始推动全球经济的巨大变化。

珠江三角洲成为出口导向型增长的火车头。

它拉来了投资，抽出了制成品。

在接下来的几年里，这种惊人的扩张将吸引更多的世界上最大的公司和银行，使香港变得更加富有，因为他们设立了办公室，使用了服务并支付了当地的税收。

然而，当时殖民地的许多人担心1997年，寻求对不确定性的保险，并过度关注他们认为是北京政治风险的曲折。

对共产党垮台的预测是中国家庭饭桌上、记者和外交官交流八卦的酒吧里以及外籍人士乡村俱乐部午餐会上的主要内容。

事实上，人民共和国即将进入一个稳定的时代，这个时代将持续20年之久。

 

China began to drive great changes in the global economy in 1991 through its opening up of the south and its embrace of capital and management from Hong Kong. The Pearl River Delta became a locomotive for export-led growth. It pulled in investment and pumped out manufactured goods. In the next few years this phenomenal expansion would attract more of the world’s biggest companies and banks, making Hong Kong much richer as they set up offices, used services and paid local taxes. At the time, however, many people in the colony worried about 1997, sought to insure against uncertainty and focused excessively on what they thought were the twists and turns of political risk in Beijing. Predictions of the downfall of the Communist Party were a staple around Chinese family dinner tables, in bars where journalists and diplomats exchanged gossip, and at expatriate country club lunches. In fact the People’s Republic was about to embark on an era of stability that would endure for the next two decades.

 

在伦敦，政治考虑也很重要。

撒切尔夫人认为，在英国统治的最后阶段，最好由一位重量级的政治人物担任总督。

她开始明白，将数百万人交给一个共产主义国家是一个充满不确定性的行为，无论国际条约对它的保障有多强。

六四之后，她的继任者约翰-梅杰所承受的压力越来越大，他在与李鹏等中国领导人的接触中认识到，错误可能是致命的。

在职的卫奕信也认为，最后阶段需要改变风格，尽管他希望最后一任总督可以退居幕后，而地方政治家可以挺身而出。

六四之后，中国与香港民主派之间的政治紧张关系使这一做法充满了风险，而且可以说，如果有一位肩膀宽厚的总督能够承受可能发生的打击，那么该市的民主派政治家可能会得到更好的保护。

 

The political considerations also weighed in London. Mrs Thatcher had believed it would be best to have a heavyweight political figure as governor for the last stage of British rule. She came to understand that handing over millions of people to a Communist state was a deed fraught with uncertainty, however strongly it was underwritten by an international treaty. The pressure on her successor, John Major, had grown after June Fourth along with the realisation, fostered by his encounters with Chinese leaders like Li Peng, that mistakes could be deadly. For his part, the incumbent, David Wilson, also believed that the last phase required a change of style, although he had hoped that the last governor might step back while local politicians stepped forward. Political tensions between China and the democrats in Hong Kong after June Fourth made that a risky course, and it was arguable that the city’s democratic politicians might be better insulated by a governor whose broad shoulders could take the blows which were likely to fall.

 

出于所有这些原因，伦敦政府决定在卫奕信的五年任期结束时替换他。

众所周知，约翰-梅杰并不喜欢他对中国的访问，并认为他是被他的顾问珀西-柯利達爵士爵士弹了出来。

卫奕信承认，"有很多政治流言蜚语围绕着他有多不喜欢这次访问。

但外交大臣道格拉斯-赫德（Douglas Hurd）在其回忆录中说，他在1991年6月北京之行前就已经决定，下一任也是最后一任香港总督应该是一位英国政治家。

这个消息是在1990年12月底宣布的，当时政府说卫奕信将获得贵族身份并在12个月内退休。

他的继任者的选择被推迟到1992年英国大选之后。

赫德写道："卫奕信是一个专注且经验丰富的苏格兰人，他和他的妻子娜塔莎在香港很受欢迎。

他们代表了英国明智的中国学生传统的最后花朵之一，他们非常尊重中国人民，而不欺骗自己与中国政府打交道的困难。

 

For all those reasons, the government in London decided that at the end of Wilson’s five-year term he should be replaced. It was known that John Major had not enjoyed his visit to China and felt that he had been bounced into it by his adviser, Sir Percy Cradock. ‘There was a lot of political gossip around how much he disliked it,’ Wilson conceded. But in his memoir, Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, said he had decided by June 1991, before the Beijing visit, that the next and last governor of Hong Kong should be a British politician. The announcement was made at the end of December 1990, when the government said Wilson would receive a peerage and retire within twelve months. The choice of his successor was put off until after the British general election of 1992. There was no criticism of Wilson, Hurd wrote: ‘A dedicated and experienced Scot, David Wilson and his wife Natasha were popular in Hong Kong. They represented one of the last flowerings of that tradition of wise British students of China, who enormously respected the Chinese people without deceiving themselves about the difficulties of dealing with its Government.’

 

在香港和伦敦，卫奕信被他的批评者描述为在与中国的外交交往中过于软弱。

但这并不是中国人自己的印象。

在谈判桌的另一边，总督无可挑剔的语言技巧和礼貌的坚持被视为危险的资产。

在每次谈判中，我们都与卫奕信争论不休，"他的对手之一、在香港的新华社长期任职的張浚生说。

'卫奕信的中文说得很好，你可以用中文而不是英文与他交谈，但尽管他是一个相对明智的人，他却在执行政府的政策。

他在诸如《人权法案》等问题上与我们有许多争论和冲突。

 

Wilson was depicted by his critics in Hong Kong and London as too soft in his diplomatic dealings with China. But that was not the impression among the Chinese themselves. From the other side of the negotiating table, the governor’s impeccable language skills and polite persistence were seen as dangerous assets. ‘In every negotiation, we fought with Wilson,’ said one of his opponents, Zhang Junsheng, a long-serving figure at the New China News Agency in Hong Kong. ‘Wilson spoke Chinese so well that you could talk to him in Chinese instead of English but although he was a relatively sensible man, he was carrying out his government’s policies. He had many arguments and conflicts with us over such things as the Bill of Rights.’

 

然而，中国人足够信任卫奕信这个公正的观察家，邀请他在六四之后对珠江三角洲的城市进行私人访问，以亲眼看到改革和开放将继续下去。

'当时不仅是香港媒体，社会各界，包括许多爱国人士，都对中国的政策心存疑虑，'張浚生承认。

殖民地总督被认为是让香港人放心的最可靠的证人，这很奇怪，但却是事实。

中央政府给予了许可。

卫奕信在中国呆了大约一个星期。

他流利的中文使他能够与高级官员进行坦诚的交谈，其中一位官员用成熟的俚语倾诉，政府把自己的后院搞得一团糟。

 

However, the Chinese trusted Wilson enough as an impartial observer to invite him on a private visit to the cities of the Pearl River Delta after June Fourth to see for himself that reform and opening up would continue. ‘At that time not only the Hong Kong media but all sectors of society, including many patriots, were suspicious of China’s policies,’ admitted Zhang. It was bizarre but true that the colonial governor was deemed the most reliable witness to reassure Hong Kong. Permission was granted by the central government. Wilson spent about a week in China. His fluent Chinese allowed him to have frank conversations with senior officials, one of whom confided in ripe slang that the government had made a total mess of its own backyard.

 

作为这些动荡岁月的重要见证者，張浚生回忆说，卫奕信离职的消息让他感到震惊。

当天晚上，張浚生接到亲共的【大公报】总编辑曾德成的电话。

曾德成说，谣言已经在伦敦泄露了，报纸应该如何处理？没有来自北京的指示。

如果是真的，他们不报道，就会显得很傻。

如果是假的，就会显得是故意要把总督赶走。

这种两难境地令人烦恼；因此，这条新闻被尽可能不显眼地刊登在头版的底角，并被贴上 "外国新闻 "的有毒标签。

对这两名犹豫不决的干部来说，幸运的是，当晚在伦敦证实了这一消息的泄露。

 

Zhang, who was an important witness from a Chinese perspective on these turbulent years, recalled that the news of Wilson’s exit came as a shock. On the evening in question Zhang got a call from the editor-in-chief of the pro-Communist daily Wen Wei Po, Zeng Decheng. The rumour had leaked out in London, Zeng said, how should the newspaper handle it? There had been no instructions from Beijing. If it was true and they did not report it, they would look like fools. If it was false it would look like a deliberate attempt to drive the governor out. The dilemma was vexing; so the item was published as inconspicuously as possible in the bottom corner of the front page and given the toxic label of ‘foreign news’. Fortunately for the two dithering cadres, the leak was confirmed in London later that night.

 

中国的观点是，这显示了西方政府的 "功能失调 "性质。

張浚生是这样看的。

'他怎么能在最后几个月里运作？世界是冷暖自知的，当他还在那里履行职责时，你已经宣布了他的调职，所以他将没有威信。

 

The Chinese view was that this showed the ‘dysfunctional’ nature of Western government. Zhang saw it like this: ‘How could he operate in his last months? The world is hot and cold, you have announced his transfer while he is still there to carry out his duties, so he will have no prestige.’

 

来自一个从未公开达成政治决定的系统，張浚生可能误解了议会民主制度的运作。

但他对西方大多数决策者如何误解中国有敏锐的分析："六四事件之后，1990年东欧发生了剧变，1991年苏联解体。

但英国人误判了形势，认为包括中国在内的社会主义国家会像多米诺骨牌一样倒下。

他们的内部评估是，认为共产党在中国的统治会持续到1997年是不明智的。

张说，正是这个错误，使他们认为可以改变对香港的态度。

 

Coming from a system in which political decisions were never reached in public, Zhang may have misunderstood the workings of parliamentary democracies. But he had a perceptive analysis of how most decision-makers in the West got China wrong: ‘The June Fourth incident was followed by the dramatic changes in eastern Europe in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But the British misjudged the situation, thinking that the socialist countries, including China, would fall like dominoes. Their internal assessment was that it was unwise to think that Communist Party rule in China would last until 1997.’ It was this error, said Zhang, that made them think they could change their tune on Hong Kong.

 

中国政府不会对下一任总督的威信有任何顾虑。

世界即将开始一项伟大的国际贸易实验，这将使中国受益匪浅，而香港也即将利用其在这一过程中的特权角色，尝试自己的民主实验。

这些实验相互交织在一起，在它们解开的过程中，出现了一个不同的城市，一直到2020年。

 

The Chinese government would have no tender concern for the prestige of the next governor. The world was about to embark on a great experiment in international trade which would benefit China enormously, and Hong Kong was about to exploit its privileged role in that process to try an experiment of its own in democracy. The experiments were intertwined, and in their unravelling there emerged a different city in the years up to 2020.