In the post-Umbrella movement era, Beijing is seemingly turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to Hong Kongers’ demands — relentlessly suppressing their basic human rights — and forcing them to express solidarity with China.
This can be seen in the most recent policy address of Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s (梁振英) administration, which not only ignored Hong Kongers’ plea for genuine democracy, but also criticized students and the pan-democracy camp for advocating Hong Kong independence.
The chief executive’s criticism was weakly grounded, because it was based purely on a few articles published about a year ago in the Undergrad, the University of Hong Kong’s student magazine. Actually independence is not a real issue in Hong Kong politics at all. Leung’s criticism has raised serious concerns about restrictions on freedom of speech on one hand, and China’s increasing control of Hong Kong on the other.
China’s model of governance over Hong Kong is similar to that of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over Taiwan from the 1940s to the 1980s. In Taiwan, during the White Terror era, people were also deprived of their right to express their opinions or organize opposition parties, not to mention advocate democracy.
There are two reasons for expressing solidarity with Hong Kong in support of self-determined democracy and freedom of speech.
First, in terms of democratic development, Taiwan and Hong Kong have either experienced, or are experiencing, “colonization” — or, in the case of Hong Kong, “mainlandization” — in parallel with rising local consciousness and the search for identity.
In Taiwan, the transition from authoritarian governance to democratization was to a large extent attributable to change brought about by the illegal publication by dangwai (“outside the party”) magazines, such as Formosa and Free China, which had to a considerable extent established a Taiwanese, rather than a Japanese or Chinese identity.
At this critical moment, Leung has condemned the Undergrad articles pushing for autonomy as advocating Hong Kong independence and transgressing the core value of the Basic Law. His criticism shows that academic autonomy and freedoms that people enjoy in Hong Kong depend very much on the ideological preferences and interpretations of Chinese bureaucrats.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Furthermore, the freedom of opinion and expression lays the foundations for democratization and civilized development of society on the basis of the values of human dignity and social emancipation. Critically, Hong Kong, under the absolute rule of China, is moving on the road to serfdom as a result of China being a cult of party state feudalism and the enemy of an open society.
Is there any reason why people should not be able to say: “Je suis Hong Kong”?
Second, Taiwan and Hong Kong were among the Asian Tigers in the 1970s because of their infrastructures of freedom and democratization.
It is said that the sense of Taiwanese identity is propagated through social movements in which new media are playing a crucial role in establishing this self-image.
Similarly, the Undergrad magazine and other media outlets in Hong Kong have to insist fearlessly on freedom of speech and expression not only to build genuine democracy, but also to reconstruct a strong Hong Kong identity separate from China. This would help to spur the development of Asian democratization. Is there any reason why Taiwan would not express solidarity with Hong Kong?
Taiwan and Hong Kong share a similar history and are both faced with Chinese oppression in the political and social domains. In essence, it is demonstrable that the suppression of freedom of speech in Hong Kong is, in the end, humiliating China itself because it gives the world a clear understanding that the Chinese Communist Party regime is a tyrannical body without a democratic soul.
Chung Ming-lun is a doctoral candidate at the University of Sheffield in England. Adrian Chiu is pursuing a master’s degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
The Chinese government on March 29 sent shock waves through the Tibetan Buddhist community by announcing the untimely death of one of its most revered spiritual figures, Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche. His sudden passing in Vietnam raised widespread suspicion and concern among his followers, who demanded an investigation. International human rights organization Human Rights Watch joined their call and urged a thorough investigation into his death, highlighting the potential involvement of the Chinese government. At just 56 years old, Rinpoche was influential not only as a spiritual leader, but also for his steadfast efforts to preserve and promote Tibetan identity and cultural
RSS