In electing--over protests worldwide--to turn Hong Kong over to a China radically different from the one with which the century-old lease had been signed, the Thatcher government did negotiate certain protections. Mrs. Thatcher's successor, John

Major, sent Christopher Patten to Hong Kong to implement the transition, and, as Mr. Buckley puts it, "Acting with strict accordance to the letter of the law on the final agreement between London and Beijing, he jump-started self-rule." We get a taste here of how he managed it, as he speaks trenchantly and engagingly of freedom and totalitarianism east of Suez. CP: "I did have the license to say to my colleagues in London and to people in Hong Kong, 'Look, when we talk about things like the rule of law, when we talk about civil liberties, when we talk about elections, we mean the real thing, not how China may redefine these things.' In relation to elections, for example, I am often embarrassed by the modesty of what I tried to do and say, which provoked this astonishing reaction from China.... I recall one leading China advisor saying: 'Governor Patten doesn't understand the Chinese. They don't want to rig the elections, they just want to know the results in advance.'"