Midnight on Monday marked the 27th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty. Under the terms of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, an international treaty lodged at the UN, China promised that Hong Kongers’ way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years and the territory would have “a high degree of autonomy” under the so-called “one country, two systems” framework.
Beijing’s crushing of the 2019-2020 anti-extradition law protests and imposition of the National Security Law in 2020, overriding even the pretense that Hong Kong’s autonomy would be respected, is a profound reminder to Taiwanese — who China also offers a “one country, two systems” framework — that Beijing can never be trusted.
“One country, two systems” was first tried in the 1950s as a framework for incorporating Tibet into China. In 1951, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) signed the “Seventeen-Point Agreement” with the Dalai Lama promising “the Tibetan people have the right of exercising national regional autonomy” and that the CCP “will not alter the existing political system in Tibet.”
However, Beijing never kept its word. It built its own power center that overrode the Lhasa authorities and the agreement ended in failure in 1959 with the Lhasa uprising, resulting in a Chinese People’s Liberation Army crackdown, the Dalai Lama and his government fleeing to India and the complete takeover of Tibet by Beijing.
Li Hou (李后), who was secretary-general of the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee, said that the CCP policy document on Tibet was used as a template for the drafting of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong’s Basic Law.
In the 1980s in preparation for the handover, Beijing created “united front” organizations in Hong Kong to build up support for its positions. They convinced many people, particularly democracy advocates, that an autonomous government of Hong Kong would be elected democratically. In 1982, leaders of two Hong Kong student unions wrote to then-Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) to express support for Hong Kong’s “return” to China.
However, they also expressed doubts about whether China would govern Hong Kong democratically. In his reply, Zhao said that China “will insist on the principle of democratic self-governance by the Hong Kong people; the central government will not interfere in Hong Kong’s internal affairs and ... its highest leader will be elected through universal suffrage.” The students and many pro-China people in Hong Kong were hoodwinked.
No democratic politician should brook any concessions to the CCP and yet there are still many in Taiwan who advocate that Beijing is a good-faith actor that can be negotiated with. There are still some politicians who give succor to Beijing’s “united front” work by traveling to China and liaising with officials and organizations there. They are like turkeys voting for Christmas.
The history of the CCP’s relationship with China’s periphery is the history of making tactical promises, buying time and winning over local elites while preparing itself for the full elimination of those elites, as well as government institutions and regional autonomy. It is all in the service of fashioning China into a new empire, recovering the so-called “lost” territories of the Qing Empire and administering them under direct and complete CCP control.
Pro-China politicians should discard their “China mentality” — the “China” narrated to them by their pan-blue parents and party-state education is a lie.
What happened in Tibet was a prelude to Hong Kong. What happened in Hong Kong could be Taiwan’s future if Taiwanese do not protect their freedom and democracy.
It is time that everyone in Taiwan sat up and took notice.
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