Hard on the heels of the referendums in Taiwan, Hong Kong held its first legislative election since the electoral system was overhauled under the direction of Beijing.
According to the new system, 40 of the 90 seats in the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) were elected by the 1,500-member Election Committee, which has only one non-establishment member.
Previously, 35 of the 70 LegCo seats — 50 percent — were directly elected, but this time, 20 of the newly increased 90 seats — less than one-quarter — were directly elected, and were instead elected by the committee.
Every candidate was also vetted by the Hong Kong Committee for Safeguarding National Security to ensure that they were considered “patriots.”
These changes were the result of a direct intervention by Beijing, contravening Hong Kong’s Basic Law so that the Chinese Communist Party can exercise complete control over the territory.
The move demonstrates to the world what “democracy with Chinese characteristics” looks like, and also shows Taiwan what a real autocracy looks like, or what it means to say that an electoral process is “already dead.”
Although the result of the “election” was the expected landslide “victory” for pro-establishment factions, Hong Kongers had long known that it was going to be a “fake election with real appointments,” and so stayed away from polling stations, refusing to participate in a political farce.
Even though the Hong Kong government detained individuals who had urged people to not vote or to cast spoiled ballots, and had even issued warnings to the foreign press and to overseas Hong Kong citizens, it was in the end unable to quash Hong Kongers’ resolve to frustrate the election.
Given the iron resolve of Hong Kongers to safeguard their democracy and their freedoms, the Hong Kong government and pro-establishment factions pulled out all the stops to get people out to vote, even setting up polling stations close to the border with China to make it more convenient for Hong Kong citizens living in China to cast their ballots.
Even then, official statistics showed that there was an unprecedentedly low turnout of 30.2 percent, about half the turnout of the previous election.
Even more embarrassing for Beijing was that Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) said that the low voter turnout showed that the government is “doing well” and has a high level of credibility, “because the people do not have a strong demand to choose different lawmakers to supervise the government.”
She said that the elite class that had grown out of the political system during the time of British colonial rule had long ago shown itself to be thoroughly corrupt when exposed to Chinese bureaucratic culture.
Since the protest movement objecting to extradition to China began in 2019, the deteriorating situation in Hong Kong has consistently demonstrated that China does not sit well with universal values, and that Hong Kong has been on the front line in the democractic battle against China.
Meanwhile, in Taiwan, which should understand Hong Kong’s predicament more keenly than any other country, there seems to be a common assumption that nothing bad will happen if it does not provoke “the dragon,” despite China’s constant infiltration and intimidation, and a profound sense of alarm and awareness of Beijing’s hostile intent.
Even more worrying is the number of people who seem to think that warnings of this infiltration and cognitive warfare are no more than deliberate smear tactics for purely political purposes, and refuse to believe that China is constantly trying to harm Taiwan.
As a new immigrant to Taiwan who has personally witnessed how Hong Kong has deteriorated under Chinese rule from a prosperous territory to its current circumstance, I am very concerned about Taiwan’s future.
Hong Tsun-ming is director of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party’s Yilan County branch and a former citizen of Hong Kong.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Ahead of US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) meeting today on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea, an op-ed published in Time magazine last week maliciously called President William Lai (賴清德) a “reckless leader,” stirring skepticism in Taiwan about the US and fueling unease over the Trump-Xi talks. In line with his frequent criticism of the democratically elected ruling Democratic Progressive Party — which has stood up to China’s hostile military maneuvers and rejected Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework — Lyle Goldstein, Asia engagement director at the US think tank Defense Priorities, called
A large majority of Taiwanese favor strengthening national defense and oppose unification with China, according to the results of a survey by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). In the poll, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s claim that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference on Thursday last week, adding that about 75 percent supported the creation of a “T-Dome” air defense system. President William Lai (賴清德) referred to such a system in his Double Ten National Day address, saying it would integrate air defenses into a
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
RSS