Hong Kong's former No. 2 official said Beijing should allow faster democratic reforms in the territory if it wants to persuade Taiwan to join China, newspapers reported yesterday.
Anson Chan (
Beijing has threatened to use military force if Taiwan declares independence. It has been pressuring Taiwanese to unify under a "one country, two systems" model similar to the way Hong Kong was purported to have been governed since the former British colony went under Chinese rule in 1997.
Although Hong Kong has enjoyed Western-style civil liberties, it has had only limited democracy since the handover. Its Basic Law sets out universal suffrage as an eventual goal but specifies no timetable.
China ruled in April that people in Hong Kong cannot directly elect their next leader in 2007 nor all lawmakers in 2008. The decision drew sharp criticism in Hong Kong and abroad.
Chan told students at a university on Thursday that citizens should work to assure Beijing that a democratic Hong Kong would not lead to instability, the South China Morning Post reported.
``We will not get an agreement on universal suffrage and the date for it without setting the minds of the central government at ease,'' Chan was quoted as saying. ``It is a job for us to start now.''
Chan was appointed by the last British colonial governor and was seen as a bridge of stability through Hong Kong's handover. When she quit in 2001, many believed it was over disagreements with the territory's chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa (
Chan, who remains popular, said she hopes that Hong Kong could have direct elections for its next leader and all lawmakers in 2012.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods