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
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