Hong Kong handover: What Patten had to say

Excerpts from outgoing Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten's farewell speech, delivered at a British farewell ceremony last night:

"History is not just a matter of dates. What makes history is what comes before and what comes after the dates we all remember. The story of this great city is about the years before this night and the years of success that will surely follow it."

"What we celebrate this evening is the restless energy, the hard work, the audacity of the men and women who have written Hong Kong's success story - mostly Chinese men and Chinese women. They were only ordinary in the sense that most of them came here with nothing. They are extraordinary in what they have achieved against the odds."

"Hong Kong's values are decent values. They are universal values. They are values of the future in Asia as elsewhere - a future in which the happiest and the richest communities and the most confident and most stable, too, will be those that best combine political liberty and economic freedom as we do here today."

"Now Hong Kong people are to run Hong Kong. That is the promise - and that is the unshakable destiny."