On July 1 over 500,000 people took to the streets of Hong Kong to demonstrate peacefully against Act 23 of the Basic Law, the anti-subversion bill which would infringe on their basic freedoms. This outpouring of discontent forced Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) to first propose diluting the most objectionable features of the bill and then to postpone the deadline for the legislation after he lost the support of the majority in the Legislative Council. Two key members of his Cabinet, security secretary Regina Ip (葉劉淑儀) and financial secretary Anthony Leung (梁錦松) resigned soon after.
On July 19 Tung made a one-day trip to Beijing to confer with China's top leaders. Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) said Beijing was against "foreign forces" interfering in the internal affairs of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). Hu pledged full support for Tung, praising him for working "with a lofty sense of mission and responsibility" and making important contributions to the territory's prosperity and stability. Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said the "one country, two sys-tems" policy had a "strong vitality and could not be shaken by any forces."
Beijing is adamant that Article 23 will have to be passed at some point, as required under the Basic Law, the mini-constitution put in place when Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule. The Chinese leaders were silent, however, about the demands for direct election of the chief executive in 2007, universal suffrage and direct election of the full legislature by 2008, political reforms which are all also stipulated in the Basic Law.
There are a couple of reasons behind the tough stance of the Hu-Wen team.
First, to accede to Hong Kong's defiance of Beijing's will is to create a dangerous precedent for the restless Chinese population which is plagued by rural poverty, official corruption and high unemployment. Beijing's foremost concern is stability, ie, the monopoly of power by the Chinese Communist Party.
Second, the push for Article 23 reportedly originated with former president Jiang Zemin (江澤民), who is eager to see Falun Gong outlawed in the territory. Hu and Wen are still struggling to consolidate their power base vis-a-vis the hard-nosed Jiang and his cohorts. Hu's team simply cannot appear weak in comparison.
While British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly have expressed hope for democratic reform in Hong Kong, the sad fact is neither the US nor the UK is in any position to offer anything more than such verbal moral support. Unfortunately for the people of Hong Kong, freedom is virtually impossible to retrieve once it is lost.
China promised the people of Hong Kong 50 years of autonomy and democracy. In just six years, the territory has lost its judicial independence and now faces severe erosion of the freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. And the promised democratic reforms are nowhere in sight. The "one country, two systems" model has clearly been exposed as a crude fraud.
Nevertheless, this fact has not stopped Beijing from trying to lure the mercantile Taiwanese people with the discredited "one country, two systems" model to unify with China. Wang Zaixi (王在希), deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council, defended the model as the "correct formula to reunite with Taiwan" while offering an improvement. "For instance, Taiwan may keep its own army and the central government would not send a single soldier there," the Xinhua news agency quoted Wang as saying in a recent report.
The problem with this ploy is that it has been used before. In 1984 Beijing's negotiators promised Hong Kong the very same thing. The following year, Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) summarily abrogated the agreement. Are the Taiwanese as gullible as Beijing appears to think they are?
On July 18 Wang also offered to negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan, in order to boost bilateral economic ties. Economic relations between China and Taiwan have already grown by leaps and bounds over the past two decades. Further economic integration with China will accelerate the hollowing out of Taiwan's economy. An FTA with China would add pressure for direct transportation across the Taiwan Strait, which will impair Taiwan's national security.
Since Tung became chief executive in 1997, Hong Kong's economy has suffered two recessions. Unemployment stands at 8.3 percent. Property prices have plunged by 60 percent. Are the Taiwanese obtuse enough to follow in Hong Kong's footsteps?
Next year's presidential election will determine not just which political party will take power, it will also decide whether Taiwan can continue to survive as a sovereign and democratic nation. The experience of Hong Kong hopefully will make the Taiwanese appreciate and value their freedom and prompt them to make the right choice accordingly.
Li Thian-hok is a freelance commentator based in Pennsylvania.
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