There was a great deal of concern in the late 1980s and early 1990s about the impact Hong Kong’s 1997 handover would have on the many freedoms that the territory’s residents enjoyed that Chinese citizens did not. The fear was of overt Chinese action — of People’s Liberation Army troops in the streets, of press censorship — despite the pledges Beijing made when it agreed to the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong on Dec. 19, 1984, which laid the groundwork for the territory’s Basic Law.
It turns out that such concerns were misplaced: Beijing did not have to act; it simply had to bully and bluster — many in Hong Kong and elsewhere proved all too willing to censor any thoughts, words and deeds that might trigger disapproval from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) apparatchiks. Such cravenness has, in the intervening years, continued to spread. Spinelessness appears easily transmitted through the insidious vector of China’s growing economic might.
Some of the more recent examples include Hollywood studios that are seeking financial backing and access to the Chinese market by not just building production facilities and hiring Chinese actors, but by altering scripts to eliminate anything that might give Chinese censors an excuse to edit or bar a film. The leak of Sony’s hacked e-mails provided ample evidence of such kowtowing. Western publishing houses are so eager to sell books in China that they are willing to ignore the censoring of their authors’ works. Some authors only learn of the changes after their books have been translated and published, but too few have taken a stand against censorship and decided to forgo having a Chinese edition. Long gone are the days when US and other Western publishers would boycott the Moscow International Book Fair in a show of opposition to the Soviet government’s persecution of its writers and other artists.
Governments have grown increasingly reluctant to openly confront Beijing — over alleged hacking of government and corporate targets, over Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) assault on China’s nascent civil society, or over Beijing’s persecution of Uighurs under the guise of “anti-terror” efforts — even before Beijing retaliated against Norway with a diplomatic (and business) freeze after the Oslo-based Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded the 2010 prize to Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) — even though the Norwegian government has nothing to do with the prize.
How else to interpret Britain’s recent denial of a six-month business visa to Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei (艾未未) on the grounds that he did not disclose a criminal conviction in China when he applied for the visa — even though Ai has never been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. He was detained — in a secret location — for 81 days in 2011 in clear retribution for his criticism of the CCP and the government, and was forced to pay a massive fine for alleged unpaid taxes, but he has yet to appear in a Chinese courtroom as a defendant.
London’s immigration authorities did grant Ai a 20-day visa, but not only will that not allow him to attend the opening of a retrospective of his work at the Royal Academy of Arts next month, it will also conveniently keep him out of the UK when Xi makes a state visit in October.
Taiwanese have suffered from seven years of increasing appeasement of Beijing on the part of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government under the guise of improved cross-strait relations, regional peace and economic connections — while watching helplessly from the sidelines as Chinese authorities belittle this nation and humiliate its leadership. The steady drumbeat of defeatism from those who say that the US has too much to lose defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese military assault just adds insult to injury.
No one wins when everyone tries to play by China’s rules — except the CCP.
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As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry