Hong Kong Has Regressed to Taiwan’s Era of Martial Law | Leung Man-to
“Ten Years,” the Best Film of the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2016, imagines Hong Kong as a full-fledged Chinese city in 2025, with the local vernacular discriminated against, freedom of speech and press lost, and local agriculture entirely destroyed, while the government is facing a major crisis. The part that generates the most discussions is whether the Hong Kong government will introduce a National Security Law or similar martial laws to purge resistance in 2025.
The movie pictures that in the year 2025, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) legitimizes the introduction of national security clauses with a conspiracy or in the name of fighting against the independence movement in Hong Kong. Most of the Hong Kong people who have seen the movie might not have expected that under the control of Beijing, the legislation of the Hong Kong National Security Law was hurried over amid overwhelming opposition.
After Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the people of Hong Kong had expected him to be an open-minded leader with the chance to grant Hong Kong democracy. In 2014, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying denied the direct election of the Chief Executive and the Legislative Council and triggered large-scale protests. Some people of Hong Kong even thought they could report Leung to Xi with the belief that Leung would soon step down. In hindsight, any illusion about CCP is beyond stupidity. In fact, the white paper of “One Country, Two Systems” published in mid-2014 before the Umbrella Movement has already set “One Country” above “Two Systems.”
CCP’s silent revolution: eliminating Hong Kong first
For the Xi regime, it is simply wishful thinking that one day the two direct elections with universal suffrage promised in the Basic Law would be implemented. Based on current observations, we can boldly infer that since Xi came to power, the CCP has been accelerating a silent revolution to replace the United States in dominating the world. Hong Kong is regarded as the frontline of the anti-communist resistance. For the CCP’s silent revolution to succeed, there must be a plan to eliminate Hong Kong: the two systems must be completely destroyed within 10 years, the plan to keep the island but not its people will be pushed forward at full throttle within 20 years, and by 2047 they would completely eliminate the identity of Hong Kong with the Greater Bay Area Plan and turn Hong Kong into a second-tier city of China.
The road of resistance in Hong Kong is becoming more and more difficult. Let’s first put aside the idea that COVID-19 is a conspiracy by Beijing, but in fact, the pandemic forced the anti-extradition movement last year into a stop. When the streets are blocked, the people of Hong Kong could only set their eyes on the legislative council. The opposition was expecting to kick out the royalists in the 2020 Legislative Council election after they won a landslide victory in the 2019 local elections. The CCP feared that Hong Kong Legislative Council would derail, and suddenly the epidemic went out of control, so the Hong Kong government deprived its people of the right to vote on the grounds of controlling the epidemic, halted the Legislative Council election, and formed a provisional legislative council.
Afterwards, the CCP wants to take a mile after they got an inch. They disqualified four pan-democratic legislators from the provisional legislative council. After the pro-democratic legislators resigned en masse, the pro-communist ones have taken complete control of the council. The Hong Kong government suppresses dissidents with no mercy. Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow were sentenced. Jimmy Law was silenced with the accusation of “colluding with external elements” according to the Hong Kong National Security Law, shown to the public with handcuffs and iron chains around his waist. CCP’s humiliation of him has provoked uproars around the world. The Hong Kong National Security Law with the epidemic has made Hong Kong the Taiwan under martial law in the 1970s. In fact, the people of Hong Kong have been suffering from indiscriminate arrests, imprisonment, prosecutions, and murders since last year, and many Taiwanese are not unfamiliar with the scenario.
Over the past eight years since Xi came to power, Hong Kong has undergone profound changes, and Taiwan is also facing increasing pressures. Be it the international publicity campaigns or the various suppression and infiltration of Taiwan and Hong Kong, the force has never been reduced. Most media in Hong Kong have been compromised. The only standing satellite TV is TVB nicknamed the Central China Television of Hong Kong, and many radio programs and cable TV channels in Hong Kong have been crashed one after another. In Taiwan, CCP attempted to monopolize the media in Taiwan in 2012, and they also tried to control the financial market and the various service industries in 2014 with a Cross‑Strait Service Trade Agreement. If it hadn’t been blocked temporarily in the first place, the consequences would have been unimaginable.
“Consensus” is surrendering Taiwan to China
The tragic experience of Hong Kong is a bloody lesson. There can only be one attitude toward the CCP: a more distrustful attitude than absolute distrust to guard against and eliminate every work of infiltration and incorporation they have been doing. Taiwanese people must recognize that no matter what consensus it is called, it is actually a consensus to surrender Taiwan to CCP. No matter it is called One Country with how many systems, the point is that there will only be a Chinese system but no Taiwan system. Can Hong Kong be recovered? Can Taiwan hold up? It depends on everyone’s determination and perseverance.
(Leung Man-to, Professor, Department of Political Science, National Cheng Kung University)
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