TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Chris Patten (彭定康), the last governor of British colonial Hong Kong, believes the people of Taiwan were not thought of as Beijing planned to implement the "one country, two systems" policy in Hong Kong.

“We were all aware of the fact that Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) produced this mantra principally for Hong Kong, and thought it applied to Hong Kong in a very comfortable way,” Patten said on Thursday (June 8) to an audience in Taipei.

He spoke in Taipei remotely on Thursday to promote his book, “The Hong Kong Diaries,” that chronicles his daily activities as governor up until the day control was returned to China.

Patten continued: “But I don’t think that the Chinese officials ever really thought to themselves ‘what will Taiwan think about it?’, if we show that we can’t stand any sign of the rule of law or the freedom of press or democratization in Hong Kong."

Patten said Hong Kong's post-1997 experience will clearly affect Taiwanese peoples' views about how "one country, two systems" might be implemented in their country. He added that Taiwan's perception of China's governance of Hong Kong after 1997 was not factored into Beijing's decision, showing the Chinese leadership is not as wise as some make it out to be.

Patten also dismissed the idea that “Asian values“ are incompatible with democracy. “When people talk about Asian values, and say democracy, the rule of law, free media are inconsistent with Confucian values, I say ‘look at Taiwan,'” he said.

“That’s a Confucian society which is rumbustiously democratic, it is beyond argument.”

“I’m optimistic about the values that represent Taiwan’s contribution to the world, the values that so many in Hong Kong have believed in,” Patten said. “And I’m confident that those values will survive.”

Speaking about the "one China policy" and Taiwan, Patten said that he would not “provoke anybody into suggesting that the policy does not reflect history or current realities. I certainly wouldn’t do that because it wouldn’t be helpful for anyone in Taiwan,” he said.

“It would be an intrusion into Taiwan’s affairs, and would be regarded by the Chinese Communist Party as a red flag to uphold," he said.

He also said he believes his government was too slow to develop democracy in Hong Kong. “We were almost certainly were too slow in developing the kinds of freedoms, which you understand create an open society,” he said.

“We were too slow in democratic development as well,” Patten said. “We started, but we didn’t make as much progress as I believe we should have done.”

Patten also said that the way the Chinese authorities negotiated the handover of Hong Kong led him to believe they would keep their word regarding maintaining the territory’s political system.

“The Chinese had been so keen to negotiate and argue about every tiny bit of Hong Kong’s governance, crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i,'" he said. “I thought to myself, ‘they can’t possibly have been so keen on all that detail if they were going to walk away from it.”

Patten served as governor of Hong Kong from 1992-1997, after which the colony was returned to China following the expiration of a 99-year lease, granted to the U.K. by Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) China in 1898.