Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) has acted as a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pawn, promoting an extradition treaty with mainland China and enthusiastically supporting Beijing’s imposition of Hong Kong’s National Security Law.
Earlier this week, Lam announced that she would not seek re-election and would step down in June. Her decision to fall on her sword should serve as a lesson to Taiwan’s pro-unification, pro-China camp.
An experienced administrator with a doctorate from the University of Cambridge, Lam was in 2017 selected to be the territory’s fourth chief executive and the first woman to hold the office.
Many people initially held high expectations for her and hoped she would lead Hong Kong through a political transformation.
Unfortunately, Lam turned out to be no different from her predecessors. She toadied to Beijing’s every whim and fancy like an obedient lap dog, and abandoned her fellow Hong Kongers.
Consequently, as Lam in 2019 sought to push through an amendment to Hong Kong’s extradition laws, and then later went further by conniving with Beijing to introduce its national security legislation, she was deaf to the effects on local financial markets and academic freedoms, and to calls for democracy.
Lam endorsed the use of force to suppress the legitimate appeals of Hong Kongers, and sacrificed the territory’s freedoms and democracy in exchange for personal power.
In forfeiting her intellectual credentials to become Beijing’s loyal political servant, Lam inadvertently turned herself into a lightning rod for those seeking to punish the CCP.
First, she was forced to give up her honorary fellowship at her alma mater, Cambridge’s Wolfson College, and then she was hit with financial sanctions by the UK and the US. Now, even the CCP has dumped Lam by declining to support her bid for re-election.
Lam’s political machinations have come to naught and her pretensions to power have been revealed to be the chimera they always were. Her political defenestration should be a wake-up call to people in Taiwan’s pro-unification camp.
As a free and open democracy, Taiwanese are of course welcome to hold different political opinions, such as supporting Taiwanese independence, unification with China or maintaining the “status quo” — and they can run for office on their chosen platform.
However, some pro-unification Taiwanese and media organizations have, like Lam, forfeited their political autonomy and simply parrot whatever propaganda line is being pushed by Beijing.
They questioned Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and more recently have been promoting a pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine line, mirroring the language coming out of Beijing.
Their slavish fawning at the feet of the CCP, their inability to distinguish friend from foe and their mechanical regurgitation of Chinese propaganda is identical to Lam’s behavior in every respect.
Lam has been unceremoniously tossed aside by her handlers in Beijing. Taiwanese who aspire to unite Taiwan with the “motherland” in the belief that this would bring them power and material gain should not be indifferent to her fate.
Paul Lei is a media industry veteran.
Translated by Edward Jones
China has not been a top-tier issue for much of the second Trump administration. Instead, Trump has focused considerable energy on Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and defending America’s borders. At home, Trump has been busy passing an overhaul to America’s tax system, deporting unlawful immigrants, and targeting his political enemies. More recently, he has been consumed by the fallout of a political scandal involving his past relationship with a disgraced sex offender. When the administration has focused on China, there has not been a consistent throughline in its approach or its public statements. This lack of overarching narrative likely reflects a combination
Behind the gloating, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must be letting out a big sigh of relief. Its powerful party machine saved the day, but it took that much effort just to survive a challenge mounted by a humble group of active citizens, and in areas where the KMT is historically strong. On the other hand, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) must now realize how toxic a brand it has become to many voters. The campaigners’ amateurism is what made them feel valid and authentic, but when the DPP belatedly inserted itself into the campaign, it did more harm than good. The
US President Donald Trump’s alleged request that Taiwanese President William Lai (賴清德) not stop in New York while traveling to three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, after his administration also rescheduled a visit to Washington by the minister of national defense, sets an unwise precedent and risks locking the US into a trajectory of either direct conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or capitulation to it over Taiwan. Taiwanese authorities have said that no plans to request a stopover in the US had been submitted to Washington, but Trump shared a direct call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平)
Workers’ rights groups on July 17 called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant fishers, days after CNN reported what it described as a “pattern of abuse” in Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry. The report detailed the harrowing account of Indonesian migrant fisher Silwanus Tangkotta, who crushed his fingers in a metal door last year while aboard a Taiwanese fishing vessel. The captain reportedly refused to return to port for medical treatment, as they “hadn’t caught enough fish to justify the trip.” Tangkotta lost two fingers, and was fired and denied compensation upon returning to land. Another former migrant fisher, Adrian Dogdodo
RSS