On the 20th anniversary of the UK’s handover of Hong Kong to China, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Sunday gave a glowing interpretation of Hong Kong’s apparently unprecedented democratic freedoms, tempered by his “red line” on attempts to realize sovereignty.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥), Beijing’s preferred choice for the job, celebrated her recent election, having won 777 votes from a population of almost 7.5 million.
The groundwork for the handover was made in 1984, with the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration by then-People’s Republic of China (PRC) premier Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) and then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
It was registered by the two governments at the UN on June 12, 1985. There has been no legal reason for it to be rescinded according to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which lists error, fraud, corruption, coercion or conflict with a peremptory norm as reasons to invalidate agreements of this type.
Article 8 of the joint declaration states that it, including annexes, is binding.
However, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) on Friday said the declaration is “a historical document that no longer has any realistic meaning” and “does not have any binding power on how the Chinese central government administers Hong Kong.”
Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) made Beijing’s position on the matter clear three years ago, when a British delegation wanting to visit Hong Kong to monitor the government’s adherence to the treaty was refused entry.
“Britain has no sovereignty over Hong Kong that was returned to China, no authority and no right to oversight,” she said at the time.
Among other things, Article 3.5 of the joint declaration states that: “Current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged and so will the lifestyle.”
It goes on to assert that “rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, [and] … of religious belief will be ensured by law,” that these would be stated in a Basic Law and that “they will remain unchanged for 50 years.”
That Hong Kong would be allowed to carry on essentially unchanged after the handover for 50 years was central to the joint declaration and to the British government’s attempts to calm the fears of Hong Kongers concerned that everything they knew about their lifestyle and social, economic and governmental systems was about to change.
All documents are historical in one sense of the word. To call a legally binding agreement a historical document “that no longer has any realistic meaning” just over three decades after it was officially registered and less than 20 years after it took effect, when it specifies a period of 50 years, is disingenuous.
This highlights the folly of believing any assurances by Beijing about how Taiwan’s systems and way of life would be unaltered should China ever annex the nation.
It is also disconcerting that Beijing can so easily discard and unilaterally declare void a joint declaration made in good faith with another member of the international community.
Chinese authorities’ view of the joint declaration smacks of hypocrisy.
The so-called “1992 consensus” — a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted having made up in 2000 — is merely an oral agreement, not a signed agreement registered with the UN.
How can Beijing justify its insistence that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) respect and adhere to it, or all of the tantrums, retractions of “goodwill” and pressures it has placed on Taiwan until she does so?
Beijing should understand that it cannot have its cake and eat it too.
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
The immediate response in Taiwan to the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US over the weekend was to say that it was an example of violence by a major power against a smaller nation and that, as such, it gave Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) carte blanche to invade Taiwan. That assessment is vastly oversimplistic and, on more sober reflection, likely incorrect. Generally speaking, there are three basic interpretations from commentators in Taiwan. The first is that the US is no longer interested in what is happening beyond its own backyard, and no longer preoccupied with regions in other
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
As technological change sweeps across the world, the focus of education has undergone an inevitable shift toward artificial intelligence (AI) and digital learning. However, the HundrED Global Collection 2026 report has a message that Taiwanese society and education policymakers would do well to reflect on. In the age of AI, the scarcest resource in education is not advanced computing power, but people; and the most urgent global educational crisis is not technological backwardness, but teacher well-being and retention. Covering 52 countries, the report from HundrED, a Finnish nonprofit that reviews and compiles innovative solutions in education from around the world, highlights a
RSS