Taiwan might be China’s next target after it has “walled off” Hong Kong from the rest of the world with its new national security legislation, Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology fellow Wu Jieh-min (吳介民) said on Thursday.
At a seminar organized by the Economic Democracy Union, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Hong Kong Outlanders and the Judicial Reform Foundation, Wu said that the legislation is simultaneously a fig leaf concealing Beijing’s autocratic rule in Hong Kong and a figurative “Berlin Wall,” denying democratic countries access to Hong Kong.
Wu said it is evident that Taiwan would be China’s next target.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The legislation was passed by China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee on June 30 and went into effect that night. Its passage was condemned by nations around the world, who said it undermines Hong Kong autonomy and threatens Hong Kongers’ liberty and human rights.
The US repealed Hong Kong’s “special status” as laid out under the US-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992.
“While economically Beijing considers Hong Kong as ‘out of its jurisdiction,’ it has always considered it a part of China politically speaking,” Wu said.
The legislation will destroy and remove Hong Kong’s “flexibility” to simultaneous exist in and out of China, Wu said, adding that the processes behind the legislation was kept behind doors until its announcement.
While the move will ultimately hurt the Chinese economy, it would prevent Hong Kong from becoming a beachhead for democratic countries in the West, allowing the Chinese Communist Party to remain in power, Wu said.
By depriving Hong Kong of its status, China is preventing the territory from being the portal connecting China to the world, he said.
From all indications, Beijing is planning a drawn-out confrontation with the US — in short, a new Cold War — Wu said, adding that China could also invade Taiwan like Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
If China intends to engage in a Cold War-style stand-off with the US, the Hong Kong legislation would — like the Berlin Wall cut physical access between the two Germanys — deny Hong Kong access to the world, he said.
Just as the Berlin Wall was part of the Iron Curtain, so too will the legislation signify to the rest of the world that Hong Kong is the point of entry, Wu said.
If China is not intending to go isolationist and is, instead, attempting to use Hong Kong as the first move to invade others, “then Taiwan must be careful, as we might be next,” he said.
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