There are three interpretations around the “1992 consensus.” From China’s perspective, “One China” embodies its own “One China Principle,” which emphasizes Beijing to be the only undivided sovereignty of China. The old Kuomintang claims the key to “one China” is the respective interpretations, particularly regarding the legitimate representative of that sovereignty. The new faction Kuomintang believes the consensus has become pro-Beijing and therefore is meaningless and not worth mentioning.

People would still remember when the term was first coined, China was very enthusiastic in mentioning “put aside minor differences so as to seek common ground.” As long as “One China” was mentioned then all else is fine. However, in just a few years’ time, when former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou met Xi Jinping for the last time, Ma did not even dare to wear the Taiwan national emblem lapel pin. He probably understood that China did not recognize his understanding of “One China” with “differing interpretations.” Any further reference would only make things ugly on the spot.

What is next after being lured into a pirate boat with a lollipop? Fortunately, Taiwan still has a route of retreat from the so-called consensus. Hong Kong is in a pickle.

During the negotiations in the 1980s between the UK and China on returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, China said that Hong Kong will enjoy “a high degree of autonomy.” In fact, China proclaimed that autonomy was not enough, there would be more. However, Beijing withdrew its previous remarks not many years after 1997: a high degree of autonomy is not autonomy as China is a unitary political system, not a federal system; moreover, there are no “reserved powers” as the powers which are neither prohibited or explicitly given by Basic Law lie with the Central Government. (That is bullshit logic. Taiwan is neither a federal system but the constitution stipulates that local governments have complete reserved powers to handle local affairs.)

If “a high degree of autonomy is not autonomy,” then the “autonomy” referred to by China should have a higher standard than “a high degree of autonomy.” What exactly does it mean? There are examples for everyone to see.

Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia are all undisputedly official “autonomous regions.” Let us look at Inner Mongolia, the most “obedient” of the three, where China has recently implemented linguistic and cultural genocides. Starting this autumn, curriculum reforms in school will replace Mandarin as the medium of instruction of some subjects for elementary first-graders and first-year junior secondary, which is the so-called “the second kind of bilingual education program.” (This immediately detonated an unprecedented Inner Mongolian resistance movement.)

However, China has always claimed that its autonomous region policies “protect ethnic minorities of their rights to the independence of culture and use of local language.” Nevertheless, China reneging on its words did not come as a surprise as it is a characteristic of Chinese leaders. There is another level of significance to the recent Inner Mongolian protest.

From the perspective of the implementation of the language policy, the level of autonomy of Inner Mongolia is indeed higher than that of Hong Kong. From 1949 to 2020, China was restrained for 71 years before suppressing the Mongolian language. Whereas the eradication of Hong Kong’s mother tongue is already underway. (The Hong Kong dialect is a highly alienated alternative Cantonese with strong local characteristics.)

The Hong Kong government has been vigorously promoting the use of Standard Mandarin as the medium of instruction in elementary and secondary schools since 2008. Students must master the Beijing accent, otherwise they will fail the grade. (Some schools have already begun to actively penalize students who speak the Hong Kong dialect while on the school campus. This is just like how the Kuomintang dealt with students who spoke the Min Nan dialect back then in Taiwan.) Counting from 1997, that was only 11 years ago.

The promised higher degree of autonomy for Hong Kong, in the end, is no match to that of Inner Mongolia. This is highly correlated with whether China can control the local situation. Inner Mongolia has been severely damaged since the first phase of the Cultural Revolution. The appalling “Inner Mongolia People’s Revolution Party purge incident” led to the deaths of nearly all Inner Mongolian intellectuals and elites within one or two years. The ethnic national spirit was devastated. Since then, the Mongols have no power to fight back against the overwhelming inner colonization of Mongolia, so Beijing has been able to deal with Inner Mongolia slowly, until this summer.

This approach is exactly the same as how China handles the Hong Kong democracy movement. From 1997 to 2014, Hong Kong’s democrats advocated that the resistance should be “peaceful, rational, non-violent, non-use of foul language.” China has been very tolerable, and even did not interfere with the annual commemorative activities of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Victoria Park, because the threat to the regime was zero. However, after the 2014 Umbrella Movement and 2016 Fishball Revolution, China realized the people of Hong Kong meant business and revealed its true colors. China’s policy is “the stronger the resistance, the harder the suppression,” which is just the reversal of the order of one of Mao Zedong’s sayings.

This point has special significance for Taiwan. Former president Ma Ying-jeou often said that the cross-strait relation was in harmony during his tenure because he emphasized one China. Having said that, the more complete interpretation is that in those eight years, the Ma administration bowed and kowtowed to China. Given China thought it was a job well done, there was no need to turn ugly to get what it needed from Taiwan.

After the Sunflower Student Movement and Tsai Ing-wen took office, Taiwan will no longer budge and China immediately performed a magical face changing of Sichuan Opera. The anti-China ratio among the Taiwanese population is higher than that of Hong Kong. Once “one country, two systems” is accepted, the sweet talks in the beginning phase will disappear faster than they would in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is indeed a “one country, two systems showcase unit” for Taiwan.

This week, Hong Kong lost the separation of powers. China sent politicians to echo the Hong Kong government’s latest statement that Hong Kong people have misunderstood the Basic Law for more than 20 years in that there is in fact no mention of separation of powers and judiciary independence. Fortunately, some people produced rebuttal evidence: in the official Chinese circular issued for the Hong Kong Handover Ceremony in the small hours of Jul. 1st, 1997, the first sentence said, “one country, two system includes the separation of powers.”

(Joseph Lian Yi-zheng is a veteran commentator, a professor of economics at Yamanashi Gakuin University in Japan and the former chief editor of the Hong Kong Economic Journal.)

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