The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing claim Hong Kong and Taiwan are “unpatriotic” at best, “traitorous” at worst, manipulated by “foreign influence”.

Why has it been so hard for the CCP to win over “hearts and minds” in Hong Kong in Taiwan?

Why didn’t the Taiwanese people vote to reunify with “motherland”?

Why didn’t the 8 million in Hong Kong pour out to the streets to sing their hearts out on July 1, 1997 when the UK handed HK over to Mother China?

Why do thousands continue to demonstrate at the risk of getting tear-gassed and beaten up by the police?

Why indeed have the CCP had to invent this “One Country Two Systems” format to attract these two societies papering over the fact that neither of them wished to live under “One Country One System”, the natural form of any country?

In Taiwan, a poll conducted in June 2019 indicated that only 4.7 percent identified themselves as “Chinese." Over 72% did not consider Mainland China as “friendly”. For details, click here .

In Hong Kong for those below 30, by eerie coincidence, also only 4.7% considered themselves “Chinese” in a recent poll. For details, click here .

The CCP constantly trot out proudly the fact that China is now the largest economy measured by GDP in purchasing power parity(PPP). For details, click here .

And 850 million have been lifted out of poverty under their rule. Shouldn’t HK and Taiwan be impressed?

Yet they are not.

In terms of 2020 GDP (PPP) per capita, a more relevant number, HK at US$66,530 ranks about 10th in the world, Taiwan’s $57,210 at 13th, while communist China with $21,000 is at 67th! Click here .

Neither Hong Kong nor Taiwan has had to go through CCP-led deadly mass movements turning one against another to achieve a superior income level that is several orders of magnitude higher than that of communist China that is still at best a semi developed country. So why should either society be impressed?

Premier Li Ke-qiang has recently pointed out that 600 million Chinese monthly income was still 1000 RMB (US141.25), hardly enough to maintain a decent living in today’s China. For details, click here .

The issue is not about money. Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan simply do not identify themselves as “Chinese” because they do not share the Chinese Communist values, nor do they want to live under a government that rules by law and by men.

The fear of losing liberty under arbitrary rule was at the bottom of the social unrest that remains the single most over-riding concern among the Hong Kong people.

The CCP continue to ignore that the breaking of a promise is a reminder to Hong Kong how many previous promises have been broken by the Communist Party.

It reminds everyone once again that the Party was born with a thoroughly un-Chinese creed of Marxism-Leninism “localized” by Mao Ze-dong’s random musings as if they came down from Mt. Sinai by Moses who got them from God itself.

The mishmash of beliefs, plus Mao’s “divine” thoughts, drove the CCP to brutalize the people in whose name they ruled. The three decades of 1950s to 1970s saw the deaths of tens of millions due to CCP-made famines and murderous mass movements, the truth of which has never been properly revealed to the people.

Unlike modern German leaders constantly facing up bravely to past Nazi crimes atoning for them publicly, the CCP have never once offered an apology to the victims and their descendants.

Deng Xiao-ping’s “Let a few get rich first!” led the CCP post-Cultural Revolution to rebrand its creed as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. “Getting rich is glorious!” became the new mantra.

It was, in fact, a primitive idea from Capitalism 101 taught in every freshman course. It had nothing to do with Socialism nor Chinese.

The CCP has cleverly used that universal human greed to create a monopolistic cartel owned by a small group of “communist” leaders and their family members.

Taking companies to the stock market, aided by Wall Street banks, imbued with the same values, has become a bottomless gold mine to the CCP leaders and their families.

The original Marxist-Leninst-Mao creed is revealed as a hodgepodge of convenient slogans as easily disposable as toilet paper. But the CCP keep this label to justify their political monopoly.

While “getting rich” is also the motivating force in all capitalist societies, Hong Kong and Taiwan retain the humanistic values of the cultural China within constitutional boundary in a modern liberal democracy. A contract is a bond built on trust and enforceable law.

Hong Kong and Taiwan Chinese are informed by their ancient cultural inheritance. They have a moral compass different from CCP’s China where children are inculcated with political education from a very young age — the CCP is the source of everything that is good. Never anything bad.

None has learned that Mao in 1972 turned down Japanese Prime Minster Tanaka’s official apology: “…If you hadn’t invaded us, the CCP could not have won power.…We are grateful to you. We do not want your war reparation!” Generous to a fault.

The suffering of millions of Chinese didn’t seem relevant to Mao.

Hong Kong is “unpatriotic” not because “foreign influence” hostile to Beijing has brainwashed the people, nor do they feel they are “superior” in some ways to the Chinese on the mainland.

HK and Taiwan are “unpatriotic” because CCP’s values and behaviors are, in fact, “foreign” to these two societies. Deep down the CCP must know this.

One of CCP’s top priorities is to reform the local HK school curriculum to reflect the same drills mainland children are subjected to.

The CCP can easily win the hearts and minds of Hong Kong and Taiwan by abandoning their 70 year old “Communist” creed to return to the roots of 4000 years of Chinese humanistic tradition embodied in Sun Yat-sen’s “Three Principles of the People”. Dr Sun was the founder of Modern China. After all, nothing about the “Communist Party of China” is communist nor Chinese.

Hong Kong and Taiwan would all clamor to be part of a One Country One System if the CCP were to shed its name, throw away its Communist Constitution and adopt the “Three Principles”.

CCP leaders could do well to remember an ancient and profound Chinese Buddhist teaching: ‘A killer becomes Buddha the moment he drops his knife.’ [放下屠刀 立地成佛]. Miracles can happen, comrades.

(Sin-ming Shaw, a private investor, is a former columnist at Time and Newsweek Asia and visiting scholar of history at Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Michigan.)

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