Tag Archives: one country two systems

Lam to the slaughter? Beijing, activists draw lines as new CE elected in Hong Kong

Carrie Lam easily won election as Hong Kong’s fourth chief executive Sunday, but running the country without a democratic mandate may prove more difficult.

Last weekend, Hong Kong’s residents were supposed to be enjoying universal suffrage for the first time in history. 

Instead, pro-democracy activists, over months of protests in 2014, rejected Beijing’s attempt at introducing a ‘Chinese’ vision of democracy that would have permitted Hong Kong’s citizens choose from among several pre-approved candidates. Those protests, which culminated in the ‘Occupy Central’ movement (also known as the ‘umbrella movement,’ a nod to the ubiquitous yellow umbrellas that protesters carried), effectively halted the adoption of a new elections law. So, on March 26,the same panel of business and civic leaders that have elected the special administration region’s executive for the last 20 years also elected Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2017.

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RELATED: Hong Kong — one country and one-and-a-half systems?

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The result? The 1,194-member Election Committee chose Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥), an experienced bureaucrat who has for the last five years served as chief secretary for administration — the most senior official in the Hong Kong government after the chief executive. Lam enjoyed the heavy, if unofficial, support of the central Chinese government. Given that the business professionals who dominate the Election Committee have much to lose by alienating Beijing, Lam became in recent months the heavy favorite to win. Opponents almost immediately mocked Lam, an increasingly unpopular administrator, for winning 777 votes — the number ‘seven’ is Cantonese slang for an impotent penis.

On paper, Lam is well positioned to lead Hong Kong. Continue reading Lam to the slaughter? Beijing, activists draw lines as new CE elected in Hong Kong

Kuomintang loses Taipei as premier resigns

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Forget Japan’s election in two weeks — the political earthquake in east Asia today come in the form of a new pro-independence mayor in Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China (ROC).taiwanChina Flag Icon

The result is a stinging defeat for the ruling Kuomintang (中國國民黨), and prime minister Jiang Yi-huah stepped down in response to the Kuomintang’s defeats in municipal elections held Saturday across the island of Taiwan. The scale of the ruling party’s defeat in the November 29 elections indicates that it will be hard-pressed to hold onto Taiwan’s presidency in 2016,  paving the way for a more stridently pro-independence president.

Following the local elections, the Kuomintang lost power in eight of the country’s 22 various city and county governments.

In Taipei, Dr. Ko Wen-je, a respected surgeon and an independent candidate supported by the opposition, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP, 民主進步黨), easily won the capital’s mayoral election, ending 16 years of Kuomintang control.

Ko defeated Sean Lien, a financier, and, as the son of a former vice president, a scion of the Kuomintang elite. Lien was never the strongest candidate for Taipei’s mayoral election, and Ko headed the trauma hospital unit that saved Lien’s life four years ago. A surgeon team supervised by Ko successfully removed a bullet from Lien’s head after he was shot at a 2010 campaign rally.

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While Lien promised to bring international capital (including, presumably, from Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere in the PRC) to Taipei, Ko focused on social justice in a country that faces growing income inequality and rising housing prices, familiar concerns across the developed world.

The elections were something of a referendum on the Kuomintang’s push to create closer economic ties with the Chinese mainland. So while the results are a setback for Kuomintang and Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), they are even worse for the People’s Republic of China.

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RELATED: Taiwan watches battle of wills
between Beijing and Hong Kong

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Earlier this year, young Taiwanese students protested in full force to stop the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA), which would have significantly liberalized trade in services with mainland China. Ma’s attempt to push the agreement through the Taiwanese legislature met with furious opposition, and the CSSTA hasn’t yet been passed into law, a significant victory for the self-proclaimed ‘sunflower student movement.’ Continue reading Kuomintang loses Taipei as premier resigns

Taiwan warily eyes battle of wills between Beijing and Hong Kong

Photo credit to Reuters / Toby Chang.

In Hong Kong, they may be protesting with umbrellas, but in Taiwan earlier this year, it was sunflowers.Hong Kong Flag IcontaiwanChina Flag Icon

As Beijing locks itself into what now seems like a needless showdown with the pro-democracy activists who have formed Hong Kong’s ‘Occupy Central with Peace and Love,’ among the chief incentives for proceeding with caution are mainland China’s relations with the Republic of China (ROC), the island of Taiwan, which split from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 in the aftermath of the Chinese civil war and which has maintained its de facto sovereignty ever since, to the annoyance of decades of Chinese leadership.

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RELATED: Hong Kong — one country, one-and-a-half systems?

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Even as Western commentators trot out tired comparisons to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown (at a time when Hong Kong’s British colonial governors were not prioritizing democratization in any form), the Hong Kong protests have a readier comparison to the ‘Sunflower Student’ movement in Taiwan earlier this spring, when another group of protesters demonstrated against closer ties between Taiwan and the PRC.

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In June 2013, Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the ruling Kuomintang (中國國民黨) signed the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement with mainland China, which would liberalize trade in services between Beijing and Taipei, including, most controversially, tourism, finance and communications. When Ma (pictured above) tried to push the CSSTA through the Taiwanese legislature without as much political deliberation as promised, an already skeptical Taiwanese opposition howled, and CSSTA protesters occupied the Legislative Yuan (立法院) to stop Ma’s push to ratify the agreement. Today, Taiwan’s legislature still hasn’t approved the CSSTA.

Moreover, Ma came out in favor of the Hong Kong protests on Monday and reiterated earlier this week his opposition to reunification with mainland China:

“We fully understand and support Hong Kong people in their call for full universal suffrage,” Ma told a gathering of business leaders in Taipei.

“Developments in Hong Kong have drawn the close attention of the world in the past few days. Our government has also been very concerned,” he added. “We urge the mainland authorities to listen to the voice of Hong Kong people and use peaceful and cautious measures to handle these issues.”

Cross-Straits relations have crested and ebbed over the last 65 years, but today it’s indisputable that Taiwan and mainland China have more ties than ever. Since 2008, direct flights between Taiwan and China have greatly intertwined the two economies, and a deluge of Chinese investment has taken root in Taiwan.

While Hong Kong and Taiwan have very different histories and relationships with the PRC, they share many similarities, so it’s not surprising to see so many similarities between the two popular anti-Beijing movements that swept across both jurisdictions in 2014.

In the second half of the 20th century, Taiwan and Hong Kong both became magnets for defectors from the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党), and both Taiwan and Hong Kong became pockets of economic prosperity while mainland China languished under Mao Zedong (毛泽东) and his fearsome reign of socialism, rural famine and political terror. Throughout, both Hong Kong and Taiwan developed particular cultural identities, such that majorities in both places see themselves today as Hong Kongers and Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

Both Hong Kongers and Taiwanese also worry that Beijing is plotting to  bring Hong Kong and Taiwan more firmly within its grasp. If it’s outlandish to think that Beijing can accomplish that goal with military might, it’s not difficult to believe it can do so through economic and political coercion. That’s exactly the kind of insidious influence that motivates both the Occupy Central’s fight for Hong Kong’s democratic sovereignty and the Sunflower Student movement’s fight for Taiwan’s economic sovereignty. Continue reading Taiwan warily eyes battle of wills between Beijing and Hong Kong