Passage of the Hong Kong national security legislation by China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee is regrettable, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said in a statement yesterday.
Through the legislation, Beijing has strongly demonstrated its adherence to the “one country” part of “one country, two systems,” but has “severely compressed” the spirit of “two systems,” which is key to maintaining Hong Kong’s development, the party said.
Passage of the legislation would inevitably add greater uncertainty to Hong Kong’s future, it added.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The “characteristics of Hong Kong’s development” and its residents’ “space for autonomy” should not be sacrificed just for political reasons, it said.
Beijing should exercise “wisdom” and “self-restraint,” it said, adding that the Chinese government should not intervene in the legislation’s enforcement or interfere with the independence of the territory’s judiciary.
Hong Kong’s legislative and judicial bodies should “firmly defend Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, [and] uphold the tradition of freedom,” it said.
Given that the legislation covers offenses committed against Hong Kong by people outside the territory who do not possess permanent Hong Kong residency, the Democratic Progressive Party government should “exhaust all possibilities to guarantee the basic rights and personal safety of Taiwanese,” it said.
The development of “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong has “proven the excellence of the Republic of China’s democratic constitutional system,” and its value to Taiwan, the KMT said.
Beijing should recognize that “one country, two systems” has “no market in Taiwan and that the Republic of China has existed internationally for 109 years,” the KMT said, adding that Beijing should handle disputes over sovereignty across the Taiwan Strait peacefully and through peer-to-peer discussion.
At the weekly meeting of the party’s Central Standing Committee later in the day, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said that the best way to rebuild the “fragile foundation of mutual trust” between Hong Kong and China was for Beijing to return the power to enact national security legislation to Hong Kong, and to “respect the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong’s judiciary.”
The party opposes that the law expands its jurisdiction to offenses committed against Hong Kong from outside the territory by people who do not possess permanent Hong Kong residency, he said.
He called on President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration to adopt a “pragmatic” and “effective” approach to assisting Hong Kongers, rather than “mere slogans.”
The KMT cannot accept Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) proposal of a “one country, two systems” model in Taiwan, Chiang said.
“Today’s Hong Kong will not become tomorrow’s Taiwan,” he added.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS