Taiwan has replaced Hong Kong as Asia’s “bastion of free speech,” as it has emerged as “one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies,” the New York Times said in an article published on Saturday.
Headlined “Asia’s Bastion of Free Speech? Move Aside, Hong Kong, It’s Taiwan Now,” reporters Chris Horton and Austin Ramzy wrote that Hong Kong used to be a haven for political fugitives and home to international media and rights groups in the Chinese-speaking world.
“In recent years, however, as Beijing has tightened its grip on the former colony, Hong Kong has been increasingly supplanted by Taiwan,” they wrote, adding that the shift was highlighted by Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) decision to open its Asian bureau in Taipei.
“Hong Kong was originally the first choice for the Asia bureau,” the article quotes Wuer Kaixi, an emeritus member of the RSF board, and one of the 1989 Tiananmen protest student leaders, who now lives in Taiwan. “But today China doesn’t just suppress its own people, it is now increasingly exporting that suppression to Hong Kong.”
The shift reflects Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) efforts to assert his control over China, including Hong Kong, the article says.
Horton and Ramzy talked to Lam Wing-kei (林榮基), one of the five men connected to a Hong Kong publishing house and bookstore who were abducted by Chinese security personnel in late 2016 and who is planning to reopen his bookshop in Taiwan.
“We Hong Kong people look to Taiwan for lessons,” Lam was quoted as saying. “And people in Taiwan look to see how the Chinese mainland controls Hong Kong.”
RSF Taipei bureau director Cedric Alviani told the newspaper that Taiwan has become an “island of stability” in a region where press freedoms are backsliding.
However, it also said that while Taiwan is relishing its new reputation, there have also been instances of it compromising on its political values to avoid angering Beijing, such as returning a Chinese activist seeking political asylum to China, or, citing Chinese journalist and author Zhao Sile (趙思樂), making it harder for Chinese activists to attend workshops or conferences in Taiwan.
Horton and Ramzy also talked to Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭), the widow of democracy pioneer Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), who told them that Taiwan’s freedoms were not guaranteed.
“We could lose our freedom of expression any time in the face of Chinese hegemony,” she told them.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS