[2] In 1968 Wilson resigned from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to edit The China Quarterly at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

After rejoining the Diplomatic Service in 1974 he worked in the Cabinet Office and then, from 1977 to 1981, as Political Adviser to Sir Murray MacLehose, then Governor of Hong Kong.

When Sir Edward Youde died in Beijing on 5 December 1986, Wilson replaced him to become the Governor of Hong Kong on 9 April 1987.

[2] As governor, Wilson had to deal with the fallout in Hong Kong from Black Monday, in which the colony's stock exchange had been among the most hit by the financial crash along with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

[5] Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times commented that Wilson's previous Chinese name sounded too much like "hypocrisy to the extent of danger" (偽得危).

In 1996 he was appointed a vice-president of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society; and he was the Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen from 1997 to 2013, succeeded by the Duchess of Rothesay.

He believes such demonstrations "started peacefully" with "a majority of young people who were clearly well-intentioned and concerned about their own future", but continued with an increasing amount of violence; he believed the police brutality during the event should be remedied, but "it is worth remembering not only that the police have been under enormous strain week after week, weekend after weekend, but that their families have also been threatened".

[12] Wilson was criticised by the pro-democracy camp for not moving more quickly towards a fully elected Legislature based on universal suffrage and for paying too much attention to the views of the Government in China in agreeing arrangements for a process of increasing the number of fully elected seats up to and beyond the transfer of sovereignty in 1997.