Who still remembers the Chinese government's brutal military suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square 13 years ago today? People in Hong Kong and Taiwan have not forgotten, nor have international human rights groups. Every year since 1989, demonstrations have been held on June 4 in major cities around the world to commemorate those democracy activists who died in the crackdown or have been imprisoned. The Chinese government also remembers in its own way -- with annual roundups of dissidents and activists ahead of the anniversary. The Tiananmen massacre has become an indelible scar.
Thirteen years on, more than 200 of those arrested for pro-democracy activities are still in prison, according to the human rights group Amnesty International. More dissidents continue to be detained.
One of this year's high-profile detainees is Yang Jianli (
Denying dissidents entry for political reasons is a common tool of authoritarian regimes. Arrested dissidents and political activists, however, can also serve the state in a variety of ways. They can be held up as examples to terrorize the rest of the populace against pushing for reforms. If a government wants to bolster its image either at home or abroad, releasing jailed activists is always worth a few public-relations points. And dissidents always make dandy bargaining chips when foreign governments or human rights groups press for their release.
Chinese authorities excel at both squashing protests and extracting the last pound of flesh from dissidents to further their own agenda. A good example was China's decision to allow dissident Fang Lizhi (
The KMT government also used to blacklist dissidents and deny them entry to Taiwan. It didn't end the practice until 1996, after many dissidents managed to sneak back into the country, in coordination with massive resistance movements organized by the opposition. Taiwan's human rights situation has improved vastly since then. Even a controversial figure like Justin Lin (
The different human rights situations on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are reflected in the differences in how Yang and Lin have been handled. Beijing should understand that arresting democracy activists does not provide a security guarantee -- it only creates a liability. The harder it tries to suppress internal dissent, the greater the people's resistance will be, and the further China will be from winning the hearts of the people of Taiwan. Only by adopting universal human rights standards will China's domestic pressures be balanced.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
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If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
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