Nearly four years ago now I was the executive producer of a film, Hong Kong: The Hidden Fear. The editing was finished in June 1989, almost on the day of the events in Tiananmen Square. Its gentle, balanced and in-depth probing was swamped by the images of Chinese government violence then sweeping the world. Though I did not know it at the time, the film was to be the end for me of years of involvement with the problems of the future of the Territory. For many of these years I was a member of the Friends off Hong Kong Committee, an admirable body on which I ceased to be active when I moved to Canberra.

LRB 19 August 1993 | PDF Download