The government on Wednesday declared Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television a Chinese-funded company after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) first raised the issue on Monday.
Liu said that due to investment by Chinese State Council-funded Bauhinia Culture Holdings and state-owned China Mobile, the local operations of the channel should be restricted.
Economic Democracy Union researcher Chiang Min-yen (江旻諺) on Wednesday echoed Liu, saying that regardless of Phoenix being a Chinese state-funded firm or a channel for the dissemination of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, it should be subject to restrictions stipulated in the Measures Governing Investment Permits to the People of the Mainland Area (大陸地區人民來台投資許可辦法).
The Mainland Affairs Council on the same day announced that Phoenix would be required to exit the local market or change its funding structure, citing the act, followed immediately by Phoenix saying that it would lay off all its local employees next month.
The issue of Chinese officials using shell companies in Hong Kong to channel funds into Taiwan, and engage in talent poaching or the dissemination of propaganda, has come to light numerous times in the past few years. Most recently, police on March 9 raided the local branches of eight Chinese electronic component suppliers suspected of talent poaching. The majority of them were registered in Hong Kong.
Officials have said on various occasions that China’s “one country, two systems” framework, which was meant to guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy for 50 years after 1997, is dead after less than 30 years. Arguably it was already dead seven years ago, when Hong Kong booksellers were abducted by Chinese authorities and taken across the border, where they were held incommunicado and interrogated because they sold books that the CCP considered subversive.
If there was still any belief in Hong Kong’s autonomy, that should have been eradicated by the introduction of the territory’s National Security Law on June 30, 2020, which outlawed any form of protest against the Hong Kong government or the CCP. This has been demonstrated through the arrests of journalists, politicians and an organizer of a Tiananmen Square Massacre vigil, as well as the closure of pro-democracy media outlets such as the Apple Daily.
Given that the loss of Hong Kong’s autonomy is now well established, it makes no sense that there are different regulations governing Hong Kong-based businesses or investors and those from China. The government should mothball the Act Governing Relations With Hong Kong and Macau (香港澳門關係條例) to close a loophole that the CCP can take advantage of.
From a business perspective, it also makes increasingly little sense for Hong Kong to be regulated differently. A Taipei Times report on Feb. 7 cited a source as saying that the CCP is working to integrate Hong Kong with nearby Chinese cities through its “Greater Bay Area” project, stepping up investment in Hong Kong and poaching talent from the territory.
Al-Jazeera on Saturday last week reported an exodus of international talent from Hong Kong due to stringent COVID-19 prevention measures, as local authorities push strategies to eradicate the virus. Hong Kong’s government is becoming increasingly belligerent toward Taiwan, having last year denied visa renewals for Taiwanese officials stationed there, and is working with Beijing to block Taiwan’s participation in the WTO.
Rather than separately investigating each Hong Kong-registered company that operates in Taiwan, the government should eliminate separate regulations for the territory altogether. At the same time, it should eliminate all references to the “mainland” in Taiwanese legislation, including the Constitution, to protect itself and make headway in its goal of being a normalized nation.
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