Taiwan’s time to replace HK
Recent events in Hong Kong show that China’s assurances about the National Security Law being targeted at only a few violent offenders count for nothing.
Everyone in public life — politicians, civil servants, the judiciary — must now be “patriots,” a euphemism for supporting the Chinese Communist Party.
All opposition has been silenced — it is illegal to protest, and self-censorship to avoid contravening the “red lines” of the national security law is endemic.
The consequences for Hong Kong’s democracy and civic society are severe, but the effects on its business community are no less worrying.
Hong Kong is largely a service economy, mostly financial. Service economies rely heavily on the perception of rule of law and an independent judiciary — the requirement for judges to be patriots is placing that perception under immense strain.
As China doubles down on “patriotism,” the perception and the reality will inevitably snap.
Businesses have largely kept quiet about the law, but scratch the surface and the vast majority are in “wait-and-see” mode; the waiting will end when the rule of law is perceived to be or is actually damaged by the judicial patriotism requirement.
That will be fatal to Hong Kong — businesses know that, but the government seems willing to run that risk. Beijing would seemingly rather kill the patient than ease up on its medicine.
Now is the time for Taiwan to step up to the plate and take over what Hong Kong is being strangled out of doing. Taiwan provides a stable, free, fair and democratic place to do business. It is a place talent wants to move to, not one people want to escape from.
Taiwan could quickly and painlessly replicate what used to be great about Hong Kong by adopting its own “one country, two systems” framework, not the absorption version of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), but one where Taiwan controls both systems.
The framework could be a separate geographic or virtual zone — it could directly copy Hong Kong’s laws and regulatory structure and guarantee that these will remain unchanged for a period.
Businesses like familiarity and certainty — if they were presented a “guaranteed-no-change” scenario, those requirements would be met.
It would mean setting up a common law system in the new zone, but there are plenty of practitioners worldwide who could make that work.
There is no shortage of talent who would be happy to relocate to Taiwan to do this — Taiwan is popular with Hong Kongers and expatriates, and would be most people’s first choice to move to, including mine.
If the political will is there, then Taiwan stands to gain from Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed suicide.
It could quickly become a real financial services hub to compete with Singapore. This is a once-in-history opportunity that Taiwan should not pass up.
Lee John Faulkner
Hong Kong
The north’s electricity use
The discussion about the proposed referendum to block the construction of a planned liquefied natural gas terminal at the Guantang Industrial Park (觀塘工業區) in Taoyuan continues.
Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) on Wednesday said that if the referendum is passed and construction of the terminal is blocked, it will become necessary to distribute electricity from southern to northern Taiwan to satisfy the north’s energy requirements and that would affect the government’s goal to reduce the use of coal-generated power.
Wang’s statement is incomplete, because a one-sided demand-side analysis implies that growing energy use in the north is unavoidable and that there is no need to discuss the fundamental premises.
The question is whether this really is true, and if it is the only way to look at the situation.
After taking office in 2016, the Democratic Progressive Party government has worked to create a non-nuclear homeland, which includes a great increase in renewable energy and a step-by-step replacement of coal by gas-fired power generation.
The results are there for all to see, but on the supply side, there has been precious little action on reducing power use.
If a similar budget were allocated to reducing power use and the development of necessary technology, surely it would be possible to restrict an increase in the north and reconsider the addition of planned natural gas turbines at the Datan Power Station to focus on environmental protection and creating a nuclear-free homeland.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has a responsibility to provide answers.
If in the end it turns out that there only is limited room for energy savings and the Datan turbines are needed, it would be more acceptable to the public.
Huang Wei-ping
Kaohsiung
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