Commentary
March is a month where strategic moves have been made by world leaders. We will first take a bird’s eye view on the geopolitical events, and carry on our discussions from a Hong Kong perspective.
The meeting between communist China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Moscow drew worldwide media attention in an unprecedented time. Xi and Putin believe that “change is coming.” Meanwhile, Putin has been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crime charges in Ukraine. That said, Russia’s “Investigative Committee” said there were no grounds for criminal liability on Putin’s part.
At around the same time, Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida made a surprise trip to Ukraine to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the U.S. home front, former U.S. President Trump might be indicted and arrested for an alleged hush money payment to a porn star during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Then we have the alleged claim that the Canadian 2021 election got influenced and infiltrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Is Xi Jinping, the paramount leader of China, going to attack Taiwan? And, like Ukraine, is the free world ready and willing to help defend the island state?
Geopolitical tensions between the Western world and the China-Russia alliance have caused a lot of uncertainty to Hong Kong. Foreign businesses that have operated long in Hong Kong have felt the heat. Can their assets be well protected? Do people still trust Hong Kong’s broken legal system?
Since the Russia-Ukraine war started in February of 2022, superyachts have been seen docking at ports in Hong Kong. The superyachts are owned by Russian oligarchs with close ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. While the United States, UK, and EU have been trying to seize the assets of Russian leaders and oligarchs globally due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the city provides a safe haven for these different stakeholders. Hong Kong will only comply with the United Nations sanctions, said Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee. It is also worth reminding us that Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee is instrumental in cracking down on Hong Kong’s freedoms and is currently sanctioned by the United States government.
By hook or by crook, China and Russia declared forming a strategic alliance with “no limits.” China has stepped up its trade and military alliance with Russia recently. In the meantime, China’s 12 points peace plan for Ukraine and Russia seems lame and questionable. And for Taiwan, is the free world ready to confront and go to war with autocratic China in case of an imminent attack on the island state?
The ambition for Xi to crush Taiwan should not be underestimated. Hong Kong is already seen as a failed model of “one country, two systems.” The Taiwan election coming up in January 2024, which adds more uncertainty to the powerplay in the Taiwan Strait. With Xi and Putin determined to sustain their authoritarian regime; and knowing full well of Xi’s aggressive stance towards Taiwan, the United States and its democratic alliance must be determined to protect the island state and counteract any military action from communist China.
Going back in time, the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan bred a new generation of activists who were against the then-ruling party of the Kuomintang (KMT). The KMT tried to abruptly pass a free trade pact with China without proper review and scrutiny. The President of Taiwan at the time was Ma Ying Jeou. At the time of this writing, ironically, Ma, who is no longer president, is having a 12-day visit to China. The Sunflower Movement that took place in March of 2014 brought a great political change in 2016. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gained power during the election in 2016, replacing the KMT. A great substantial amount of Taiwanese people are resistant to the so-called “1992 Consensus” and opposed to the idea of a “one country, two systems” for reunification with communist China. The KMT lost votes to the DPP in the 2016 election and Tsai Ing-Wen became the new president of Taiwan till the present time.
As for Hong Kong, the “one country, two systems” experiment has been a complete failure since the 2019 social movement. As most of us will know by now, with the National Security Law (NSL) in place since June 2020, Hongkongers living in the city have lost their freedoms. The citywide crackdown over the last few years has been swift and brutal. All the opposition voices in the city are now silenced. As far as the totalitarian regime is concerned, dismantling the operations of 1) Apple Daily, 2) The Alliance, which organizes Tiananmen vigils, and 3) Extinguishing democratic voices at all levels and disqualifying all oppositions during elections change the rules of the game in the city.
The Hong Kong Alliance trio (Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China), namely Lee Cheuk Yan, Albert Ho, and Hang Tung Chow were charged with incitement to subvert state power; the 47 activists who are now on trial for taking part in a primary election, plus the Apple Daily and Stand News’s senior executives are the limelight of the NSL. Together with other NSL cases, the Hong Kong court is busier than ever.
To drill deeper into individual cases, take former Hong Kong Alliance leader Lee Cheuk Yan for example. He has already been sentenced to 20 months over his involvement in three unauthorized rallies during the 2019 anti-government protests. Together with Albert Ho and Hang Tung Chow, the trio was also charged in 2021 with “inciting subversion” as leaders who organized the Tiananmen vigils in Hong Kong. Lee Cheuk Yan’s wife, Elizabeth Tang, came back recently to Hong Kong from the UK when she learnt that her husband Lee had an accident inside the Stanley Prison. She was then arrested after her prison visit.
Pro-Beijing mouthpiece Wen Wei Po (文匯報) got the exclusive report of her arrest. It is alleged that the NGO she headed was suspected of having received more than $12.7 million in donations from organizations in the United States, Germany, and Norway since 1994 to support labor movements in Asia. She is now on bail but her passport has been confiscated and she cannot leave Hong Kong.
I could go on and on and describe the dismantling process of Hong Kong and make an analysis of the geopolitical development in Taiwan. But let me finish today’s writing piece philosophically on the Hong Kong situation: I left Hong Kong quite abruptly at the end of June 2021, two days after my English editor from Apple Daily in Hong Kong got detained at the Hong Kong International Airport. Since my departure almost two years ago, the DNA of the city has also changed drastically.
I am doing activist work outside of Hong Kong more than ever. If suppression gets worse in Hong Kong, we must work harder to support those who are wrongfully imprisoned. Perhaps this is survivor’s guilt that I am experiencing. Doing advocacy work to support Hong Kong can be grueling. That said, it is really nothing when we think about the activists who have sacrificed and lost their freedoms. I will keep telling the true Hong Kong story. We must also drum up support for Taiwan to resist tyranny.
