China’s National People’s Congress has approved a plan to create national security legislation for Hong Kong, circumventing the territory’s Legislative Council to install its own national security apparatus in the former British colony.
This move would place severe restrictions on the freedoms of Hong Kongers and gut Hong Kong’s Basic Law, signaling the death knell of the “one country, two systems” model. Given the rapidly evolving situation, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) must respond promptly.
Hong Kong has long played a major role in cross-strait relations.
Early on, when still a British colony, it was a battleground for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), most Hong Kongers at the time being very clear about which side legitimately represented China.
British Hong Kong balanced the pro-communist and pro-nationalist forces within the colony.
Hong Kongers have been watching Taiwan for years, keen to follow the differences in trajectories of politico-economic developments in Taiwan and China.
Especially at the time when China was still closed to the outside world, Hong Kong was regarded as a window into what was happening in China. It was a role greatly facilitated by British Hong Kong’s emphasis on economic deregulation and the creation of a prosperous society governed by the rule of law.
However, shortly after the UK and China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 confirming that the colony would be handed back to China in 1997, an international crisis of confidence started to unfold. Beijing’s brutal suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 was a huge blow to Hong Kongers’ confidence.
In an effort to stabilize the situation in the territory, then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) met with Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠) and gave him assurances that Beijing would keep its promise to maintain the “one country, two systems” model, saying that the Chinese policy toward Hong Kong would not change for 50 years, and that there was no reason even to change it after that.
Given the special status of Hong Kong and Macau, in April 1997, just prior to the handover, Taiwan promulgated the Act Governing Relations With Hong Kong and Macau (香港澳門關係條例).
The person commissioned by the government to create this set of laws and regulations was none other than Tsai, when she was in academia.
Hong Kong and Macau were defined as different from “special areas” in other regions of China, giving additional space to Taiwan’s relations with both territories.
Taiwan has been more deregulated and open in terms of cultural, educational and economic exchanges, as well as immigration regulations, toward the territories, and for a period Hong Kong played a role in indirect trade across the Taiwan Strait.
It was Hong Kong and Macau’s status being distinct from China that allowed this.
However, since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) took the reins of power, the absorption and Sinicization of Hong Kong and Macau have accelerated.
This does not only have severe implications for the rule of law and human rights in Hong Kong, it also causes Hong Kong’s political system to gradually resemble more closely that of China, and even the quantity of trade with Hong Kong has gradually been surpassed by that of other major cities in China.
What was once an international financial center has descended into a transfer center for the capital and assets of the Chinese authorities, and corrupt players exploiting lower regulatory barriers, enabling Hong Kong capital, businesses and citizens to undertake political and economic infiltration abroad.
Taiwan has also seen examples of this problem over the past few years. People from Hong Kong and Macau are free to come to Taiwan for tourism or business with just a landing visa. This attracts Hong Kongers to Taiwan, but is not without its problems.
People such as singer and actor Denise Ho (何韻詩), Causeway Bay Books manager Lam Wing-kei (林榮基) and democracy advocate Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) have been spattered with paint or otherwise assaulted in Taiwan, while young Hong Kongers supporting the democracy movement in the territory have been surveilled while in Taiwan.
It is suspected that the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities have been behind this.
Hence, Taiwan has become an extended battlefield for Hong Kongers acting against other Hong Kongers, exploiting the convenience of the landing visa.
China Innovation Investment executive director Xiang Xin (向心) and his wife, the company’s acting director Kung Ching (龔青), who were shuttling back and forth between Taiwan and Hong Kong using passports issued by Hong Kong authorities, came under suspicion due to their involvement in the case of self-professed Chinese spy William Wang Liqiang (王立強).
The situation in Hong Kong is not just changing, it has already gone through a qualitative change. In 2014, just after Xi became CCP general secretary, China’s State Council issued a white paper on the “one country, two systems” model, saying that “the high degree of autonomy in Hong Kong is not full autonomy, nor a decentralized power, it is the power to run local affairs as authorized by the central leadership.”
When Beijing declared that it has jurisdiction over Hong Kong, a position strengthened over the subsequent years under Xi and culminating in the new national security legislation, it is clear that the so-called “high degree of autonomy” the territory once enjoyed is now dead in the water.
In response to the drastic changes happening in Hong Kong, and to ensure that national security and national interests are not jeopardized, Tsai said that the government might act according to Article 60 of the act, which states that “should any change occur in the situation of Hong Kong or Macau ... the Executive Yuan may request the president to order suspension of the application of all or part” of the legislation.
This is necessary, because as soon as Hong Kong ceases to be distinct from China, the special status that it enjoys would be open to exploitation by Beijing. This would pose a threat to Taiwan and to the world.
US President Donald Trump has announced that he is considering sanctions, and the US Department of State has announced that it has reassessed Hong Kong’s status, and would no longer be treating it as an independent customs territory from China. Taiwan should follow suit.
The government has several options on how to proceed with the act. It could amend it, scrap it altogether, replace it or place exchanges between Taiwan and Hong Kong under the Act Governing the Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例).
Whatever option it chooses, it must also cover the Hong Kongers who would seek help from Taipei. This would include reinforcing and extending supporting measures to help them obtain residential status, seek education or jobs, and to settle in Taiwan.
Hong Kong, once known as the “Pearl of the Orient,” possesses plentiful international finance skills and talent, and to deal with a possible exodus from Hong Kong, the government must expedite the regulations and measures governing exchanges between Taiwan and Hong Kong.
This is not for the purpose of cutting ties with Hong Kongers, it is about seizing the opportunity to create the maximum possible space in terms of security, human rights and economic development.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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