This op-ed is not for the true believers, nor the brave dissenters. It is for the quiet majority, those in Taiwan who see unification with China as inevitable, perhaps even acceptable. It is for those who say: “If we become like Hong Kong, so be it. It is not that bad.”
Think again. Decide only after you truly understand what everyday life in Hong Kong has become.
When Beijing imposed Hong Kong’s National Security Law in 2020, it rewrote the terms of life in the territory. The law did not land like a bomb — it seeped in like fog. No one knows where the red lines are, only that they exist and that they are suffocating.
The Internet is still accessible, but the probing questions are gone, replaced by answers preapproved by the state or filtered by self-censorship. The critics have vanished, replaced by the voices of loyalists, each vying to be the most fawning.
You can still keep your job, but the workplace you return to is no longer the one you knew. National security touches everything. You find yourself second-guessing every word in meetings and casual conversations.
Speaking freely is not an option: You must launder your words, your messages, even your tone; anything can be distorted and used to accuse you of a national security crime.
Conversations with friends grow guarded. At home, politics becomes unmentionable. Family dinners fall into silence. A child comes home reciting Chinese President “Xi Jinping (習近平) thought” from school, and you bite your tongue. To challenge them is to put them at risk. So you simmer in quiet disbelief at the absurdity of it all.
The news is not news, it is propaganda. You see familiar faces — people you once believed might do good — now parroting the party line or sitting behind bars. The old corruption you once despised is gone, simply because it is no longer needed.
The public coffers are quietly carved up, with no competition and no pretense. You watch with quiet fury, but say nothing, not online, not among friends, not even at home, because your child might overhear you, repeat it at school — or worse, report it.
On paper, the economy is “resilient.” In reality, the wealthiest have already divested or withheld investment. Many are slipping into financial distress. The middle class has fled, or is preparing to. People go out less, spend less, live less. Local shops close. Mainland Chinese chains take their place. The headlines boast of growth.
Unlike other crimes, national security arrests are made on words alone. Bail is rarely granted. Trials are slow to begin, slower to conclude and conducted without a jury.
It might sound Orwellian, but it is not fiction. This is Hong Kong today: a territory Beijing once needed to impress the world and set an example for Taiwan.
If China takes Taiwan, there would be no need to even pretend, no international optics to manage, no “one country, two systems” to uphold.
The worst is yet to come.
Taiwan would not be treated like Hong Kong. It would be treated like Xinjiang.
A Chinese academic once remarked that after unification, the entire Taiwanese population would need to be “re-educated.” That was not a joke. It was not a warning. It is the plan.
If you still think this is a life you can settle for to avoid a fight, know this: One day, you will look around at the silence, the fear, the decay, and realize you did not choose peace; you chose imprisonment.
You will regret not speaking out. You will regret not standing up when there was still time to fight.
John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.
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