Taiwan should stick to democracy and unity in the face of increasing pressure from China, former Hong Kong Legislative Council member Raymond Wong (黃毓民) said in Taipei on Wednesday.
“The one country, two systems formula applied to Hong Kong has become a hellish nightmare for the territory, and Taiwanese, regardless of their political affiliation must work together to counter China’s threat,” Wong told a seminar sponsored by the Friends of Hong Kong and Macau Association.
The “one country, two systems” framework, proposed by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), included a promise to grant Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy until at least 2047.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
Any formula designed for Taiwan’s unification with China that lacks popular support in Taiwan would be impossible to implement, as the nation is a full-blown and diverse democracy with freedom of expression, he said.
As Taiwanese are firmly opposed to China’s “one country, two systems” scheme, political parties do not need to overreact to the pro-unification rhetoric voiced by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) or rehash the independence-unification dispute to a point that divides the nation, he said.
Johnny Lau (劉銳紹), a veteran Hong Kong political commentator, said that after pro-democracy protests on July 1, 2003 — the largest in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover — China realized that, as an autocratic regime, it could not grant full autonomy to the territory.
Even if Deng were to come back to life, he would not be able to carry out his promise to grant Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy under the “one country, two systems” model, Lau said.
Therefore, Taiwanese need to pay close attention to the changes in Hong Kong and explore possible responses to similar circumstances, he said.
As the US-China trade dispute lingers, it remains unclear whether China will seek to exert greater pressure on Taiwan or hold back, he said.
In a speech on Jan. 2, Xi proposed exploring a version of the “one country, two systems” model for Taiwan, which he said would ensure that the Taiwanese social system, way of life, property rights, religious freedom and legal rights would be fully respected and protected.
However, several opinion polls conducted after the speech found that about 80 percent of Taiwanese were opposed to the “one country, two systems” formula.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater