The rising localization movement and desperate calls for democratization in Hong Kong serve as a warning to Taiwan, where Sinicization and the weakening localization movement were grave concerns, an academic said yesterday on the eve of the 16th anniversary of the territory’s handover to China.
“The situation in almost every aspect of life in Hong Kong has gotten so bad that Hong Kong independence — for which support remains very weak, however — has been mentioned among the people,” said Chen Yi-chi (陳奕齊), a doctoral candidate at University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
Chen, who also serves as the secretary-general of the Southern Taiwan Society, analyzed political, economic and social development in Hong Kong between 1997 and the present and made comparisons between Taiwan and the territory, which was handed over to China on July 1, 1997, at a seminar organized by the World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI) Taipei Chapter.
The year 2003 became a watershed year for Hong Kong, which was hit by deflation — a result of the Asian financial crisis, SARS, the controversial Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law regarding national security and the signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which increased Hong Kong’s economic dependence on Beijing, Chen said.
Since then, the “China factor” had infiltrated every aspect of the former British colony as Beijing gradually asserted its political influence and launched an economic invasion by sending more people to the territory and siphoning off its educational, medical and business resources.
By the time Hong Kongers “awoke” from the dream of “one country, two systems” that Beijing had promised, in about 2011 or last year, it was too late, Chen said.
Hong Kongers have not only found out that China’s pledge of “keeping Hong Kong’s ‘status quo’ intact for 50 years” was a lie, but have also realized that the belief of most residents — in particular after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 — that democracy in Hong Kong would be inevitably tied up with China’s democratic movement was incorrect, he said.
That was why a proposal of “city-state autonomy” and a more aggressive initiative for Hong Kong independence have been floated in recent years as Hong Kong residents came to know that democracy would not take root there without a strong grassroots political culture and awareness of their identity, said Chen, who specializes in political economy and has regularly followed Hong Kong politics.
Looking back, Hong Kongers were inspired by what happened in Taiwanese politics, such as the 228 hand-in-hand rally in 2004 and Taiwan’s referendum drives, he said.
“Two things really bother me. First, while Hong Kong is trying to break itself away from Beijing’s tight rein and its ‘one country, two systems’ lie, Taiwan is rapidly throwing itself to China,” he said.
“Second, Hong Kong residents had no choice about the handover because of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1985, but Taiwanese do. And I’m not sure if Taiwanese people realize the gravity of their situation,” he said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not