Tuesday last week marked the 17th anniversary of Hong Kong’s “return” to Chinese rule, but most people in Hong Kong have long ceased to believe Beijing’s promise that the territory’s system would remain unchanged for 50 years. Under Beijing’s control, the atmosphere in Hong Kong is getting more and more stifling. On the day of the anniversary, civic groups organized a protest march. The assembly point — Victoria Park — was packed, with crowds filling a space equal to six soccer pitches for a time, and there was hardly room to move in nearby subway stations.
In the run-up to the anniversary, the civic group Occupy Central with Love and Peace organized an unofficial referendum on how Hong Kong’s chief executive should be selected. Shortly before the referendum was launched, the Chinese government published a white paper that emphasized its full control over Hong Kong. This threat caused such indignation that nearly 800,000 Hong Kongers felt compelled to vote in the referendum.
On July 1, Hong Kongers once more took action to tell the world that they want real general elections to choose Hong Kong’s chief executive and members of the Legislative Council. They want genuine autonomy, and they do not want to be made more and more like the rest of China — the “interior” — which is what Beijing, along with China-friendly political and business interest groups in Hong Kong, has been trying to make happen. It goes without saying that Hong Kong people now face a tough battle to attain greater democracy.
Taiwan is different from Hong Kong, but the Chinese dictatorship harbors the same ambition of swallowing both territories. In recent years, the political, business and population structures of both Hong Kong and Taiwan have been drawn more and more into China’s sphere.
In Hong Kong, the crisis of its domination by the “interior” is getting more and more serious. As to Taiwan, under the China-friendly policies of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government, the crisis takes the form of a slide from “one country on each side of the Taiwan Strait” toward “one country, two areas.” Such a development would have been unimaginable six years ago.
This is why some civic groups and opposition figures in Taiwan, while opposing the convergence between Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party, have also been voicing their support for Hong Kongers’ demand for direct elections for the chief executive and legislators.
Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), one of the leaders of the Sunflower protest movement and cofounder of the new civic group Taiwan March (島國前進), flew to Hong Kong to support the July 1 demonstration, but he was refused entry and sent back to Taiwan. By rejecting Chen, Hong Kong authorities showed how fearful they are that Hong Kong residents might learn from Taiwan’s democratic experience.
Taiwanese politicians’ varying reactions to Hong Kongers’ attempts to win greater democracy — from the unofficial referendum to the July 1 demonstration — reflect their varying degrees of dependence on and opposition to China’s dictatorial regime.
The Ma administration warmly welcomed China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) during his recent visit to Taiwan. While oblivious to the fact that Zhang is an official of a country that covets sovereignty over Taiwan, the Ma government accused protesters who want to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty as violent.
This government’s topsy-turvy national identity is plain for all to see. A government that has never seen the public as masters of the nation can hardly be expected to voice support for Hong Kong residents’ demand for genuine elections. The fact that Ma was born in Hong Kong makes no difference. What worries Ma and his government is that they are not doing enough to please Beijing, so they would hardly dare offend the Chinese government by supporting Hong Kongers’ efforts to win greater democracy.
As to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), its welcome for Zhang may not have been quite so enthusiastic. Nonetheless, it departed from its previous practice by hardly organizing any protests against Zhang. The DPP invited members of the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club to a tea party on July 1, at which a great deal was said about maintaining active dialog with China. The choice of this date was sure to give the impression that the DPP was keeping its distance from the demonstration that was held in Hong Kong on the same day.
In the past, the DPP criticized the KMT for kowtowing to the Chinese dictatorship, but now it seems to be following a similar path. On the eve of Zhang’s visit to Taiwan, noises in favor of suspending the DPP charter’s Taiwan independence clause were heard once again. This time the proposal was finally blocked, but DPP leaders clearly sent out a signal of goodwill to Beijing by suspending any protest actions.
If things go on like this, will this Taiwan-centric party, for which Taiwanese people have held such high expectations, gradually turn into a party that avoids offending Beijing at all costs? Will it even get in line with the “one China” constitution and end up as a “Chinese DPP”?
Such an outcome would first and foremost please the Chinese dictatorship, because when the KMT and the DPP are vying for China’s favors, Taiwan will be ripe for the picking with no escape.
The second-most pleased will of course be the China-welcoming KMT, because a DPP that has gone batty and no longer knows whether it is Chinese or Taiwanese will fare poorly in elections and do a poor job of overseeing the government.
Democracy, freedom and human rights form the core of Taiwan’s values. However, over the past six years, a clique of China-friendly political and business interests has been yielding to China for their own benefit, causing these core values to be eroded day by day.
Hong Kong is overshadowed by China, so the traditions that were established under Britain’s administration of the territory, such as administrative neutrality, clean government, judicial impartiality, a free market and civility, have been even more seriously eroded over the past 17 years. Happily, Hong Kongers have not given up.
What makes us so concerned about Hong Kong is that the Chinese dictatorship is using similar methods, through a united-front strategy in politics, trade and culture, and through infiltration by migrants, to try and get Taiwan firmly in its grasp, and eventually to gain complete control over this country. In Hong Kong’s case, it is trying to absorb it into the “interior.” In Taiwan’s case, it is trying to annex a democratic country through a bogus peaceful process backed up by the threat of armed force.
Factor-price equalization theory holds that the prices of inputs to production, such as wages, are driven toward equality in different countries under free-trade conditions. The theory is not only applicable to international trade, but also to values such as democracy, freedom and human rights. As the Ma government links Taiwan’s economy ever more closely with China, real wages in Taiwan have been falling fast, declining to the level of 16 years ago, and Ma’s so-called “6-3-3” pledge of achieving annual economic growth of 6 percent, a per capita income of US$30,000 and an unemployment rate of below 3 percent by 2012 inevitably turned out to be an empty promise.
Meanwhile, in pursuit of eventual unification, Ma’s government has overseen a continuous deterioration of Taiwan’s democracy, freedom and human rights. Each time a senior Chinese official visits — from the visits by then-chairman of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) in 2008 and 2009 to Zhang’s visit this year — protesters have come up against higher and higher levels of state violence.
Thankfully, Taiwan is still a democracy and has not yet been taken over as a region of China. Taiwanese people can still refuse to accept such a sad fate. If they are to do that, they will have to beware of the Ma government’s fallacious arguments. If we wait until Taiwan has been annexed before fighting for democracy, it may well be too late. Who will lead Taiwan in future depends on who stands on the side of the majority opinion that identifies with Taiwan as a nation.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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