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Singapore had its own agenda when criticising Britain’s handling of Hong Kong’s early 1990s electoral reform, declassified cables show
- Former leader Lee Kuan Yew called reforms ‘ill-timed and futile’ and accused Britain of conspiring with the US to democratise China
- ‘Hong Kong deserves democracy,’ Lee said in 1992, but added ‘We do not often get what we deserve’.
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Britain suspected Singapore had its “own agenda” in the early 1990s when it criticised London’s handling of a dispute with Beijing over Hong Kong’s electoral reform, declassified diplomatic files have revealed.
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In 1994, J.S. Smith, the private secretary to then foreign secretary Douglas Hurd wrote to Roderic Lyne, a private secretary to then prime minister John Major, that Lee Kuan Yew, then senior minister of Singapore, had consistently criticised the British government’s approach to Beijing on Hong Kong affairs. Smith also suggested that Singapore might have been angling for a greater role in China’s economic development.
“At his most outspoken, [Lee] characterised the governor’s constitutional reform [in 1992] as ill-timed, futile and in breach of the spirit of our agreements and understandings with China,” Smith wrote.
“He also accused us of conspiring with the US to introduce democracy to China.”
The note was compiled as preparation for Major’s meeting with Goh Chok Tong, Singaporean prime minister at the time, in London on April 18,1994. The document was among the latest batch of files declassified from the National Archives in London.
Hong Kong deserves democracy, but alas, in the world as it is, we do not often get what we deserve
In December 1992, Lee told an audience at the University of Hong Kong: “Hong Kong deserves democracy, but alas, in the world as it is, we do not often get what we deserve.”
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