This month marks the 28th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China — a moment once framed as the launch of a proud model of unification. That model, known as “one country, two systems,” was meant to guarantee the territory a high degree of autonomy, judicial independence and eventual universal suffrage. Today, that promise lies in ruins, and for anyone in Taiwan still clinging to the illusion that the same model could work here, the facts are plain: Hong Kong was the test case — and it failed, spectacularly.
At the heart of the 1997 handover was the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, which enshrined not just civil liberties, but a path to democracy. It pledged that the chief executive would eventually be elected by universal suffrage (Article 45), and that all members of the Legislative Council would ultimately be chosen in the same manner (Article 68). In 2007, China’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress declared that universal suffrage could be implemented for the chief executive in 2017, and for the legislature “thereafter.”
That never happened.
In 2014, Beijing ruled that while Hong Kongers could vote for their chief executive, all candidates would first have to be screened and approved by a 1,200-member nominating committee dominated by pro-Beijing figures. The result was a sham election system dressed in the language of democracy. Hong Kongers responded with the “Umbrella movement” — months of peaceful civil disobedience. Beijing ignored them.
In 2015, Hong Kong’s legislature rejected the electoral reform package. As a result, the 2017 chief executive election remained restricted to a select few. The promise of democracy was quietly headed to its demise.
Then came the nail in the coffin: Hong Kong’s National Security Law, imposed by Beijing on June 30, 2020.
The sweeping law criminalized acts of “secession,” “subversion,” “terrorism” and “collusion with foreign forces,” deliberately vague terms that could mean anything Beijing wanted them to mean. It bypassed Hong Kong’s legislature entirely and allowed Beijing to establish its own security office in the territory.
So far, more than HK$13 billion (US$1.7 billion) has been taken from public coffers to fund national security operations — money shielded from legislative scrutiny and spent without public accountability.
Almost overnight, opposition figures were arrested, newspapers were shut down and civil society was dismantled.
The July 2020 democracy primaries — meant to identify candidates for the next election — were declared illegal. More than 50 organizers were arrested. This year, 45 of them were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
Meanwhile, the electoral system was overhauled: Only “patriots” are now allowed to run, and every candidate must pass a loyalty test designed by Beijing.
Hong Kong’s last active democracy party, the League of Social Democrats, announced its disbandment just before the end of last month, citing intense pressure. They are one of about 90 civil bodies that have been dissolved over the past five years, most fading quietly, as if stating the reasons would only invite the very consequences they hoped to avoid.
So much for “a high degree of autonomy.”
The reality today is plain: Hong Kong’s government is no longer accountable to its people, but to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Its legislature is a rubber-stamp body. Its judiciary is being eroded. Its civil society has been dismantled. Dissent is no longer tolerated; if it is not silenced, it is prosecuted.
This is what “one country, two systems” has become: a euphemism for total control by Beijing, staged in slow motion.
For Taiwan, the lesson could not be clearer: The CCP’s promises are as hollow as stage props. The Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong filed with the UN was unblushingly dismissed as “a historical document” by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2017, stripping it of any binding force.
“One country, two systems” was not a road map to unification; it was a time-delayed strategy for assimilation. The framework was not designed to protect autonomy, but to neutralize it over time until nothing remained.
To believe that Taiwan could somehow negotiate a better version of the system is to ignore what has happened in plain sight. There is no “Taiwan model” waiting to be offered — only the Hong Kong outcome, repackaged and destined.
On the 28th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover, do not look to the past with nostalgia, but to the present with vigilance. While the world sees the outcome in Hong Kong as a tragic failure, Beijing sees it as a resounding success. The freedoms are gone, opposition crushed and control cemented. In the CCP’s eyes, it was not a broken promise, but a fulfilled objective.
Success, after all, means different things to the authoritarian regime and the people under its iron fist.
Taiwan is the next prize. The same playbook — grand promises of autonomy, followed by incremental erosion and eventual submission — would be used again, if given the chance. Hong Kong was the experiment; Taiwan is the goal. Only the unflinching resolve of Taiwanese can make the predator stop in its tracks.
John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong who now resides in Taiwan.
Elbridge Colby, America’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is the most influential voice on defense strategy in the Second Trump Administration. For insight into his thinking, one could do no better than read his thoughts on the defense of Taiwan which he gathered in a book he wrote in 2021. The Strategy of Denial, is his contemplation of China’s rising hegemony in Asia and on how to deter China from invading Taiwan. Allowing China to absorb Taiwan, he wrote, would open the entire Indo-Pacific region to Chinese preeminence and result in a power transition that would place America’s prosperity
A few weeks ago in Kaohsiung, tech mogul turned political pundit Robert Tsao (曹興誠) joined Western Washington University professor Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮) for a public forum in support of Taiwan’s recall campaign. Kaohsiung, already the most Taiwanese independence-minded city in Taiwan, was not in need of a recall. So Chen took a different approach: He made the case that unification with China would be too expensive to work. The argument was unusual. Most of the time, we hear that Taiwan should remain free out of respect for democracy and self-determination, but cost? That is not part of the usual script, and
All 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安), formerly of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), survived recall elections against them on Saturday, in a massive loss to the unprecedented mass recall movement, as well as to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that backed it. The outcome has surprised many, as most analysts expected that at least a few legislators would be ousted. Over the past few months, dedicated and passionate civic groups gathered more than 1 million signatures to recall KMT lawmakers, an extraordinary achievement that many believed would be enough to remove at
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
RSS