Why Taiwan is concerned about Hong Kong’s fate
CCP has proved itself untrustworthy over and over again.
I turned on the TV and switched between CNN, BBC and Taiwan’s news channels. This year, I made a habit of learning what’s going on simultaneously in different parts of the world.
Coverage of protests following George Floyd’s death was literally the only news broadcast on CNN. I watched the news anchor interviewing Floyd’s family attorney (saying the official autopsy report was not reliable). An agitated Professor of Public Philosophy at Harvard stated that the US “has a system that’s unable to respond”. Below was CNN’s news ticker saying that Trump decided to stop cooperating with WHO.
Meanwhile, aside from reports related to COVID-19, most Taiwan’s news channels covered timely updates about CCP’s quickly-passed national-security bill for Hong Kong.
So why do Taiwanese people concern about Hong Kong’s fate so much?
To our people, the key message CCP sent is how deceitful it has always been.
In 1997, CCP promised Hong Kong people that they would retain their free economy, democracy, and administrative systems for at least 50 years. This autonomy is greatly contradicted with China’s communist autocracy, and thus the description ‘one country, two system’.
Over the past few years, CCP had set Hong Kong as an example of a successful autonomous region applying the ‘one country, two system’ strategy. CCP eagerly propagated this concept supported by Hong Kong’s prosperous economy, asking Taiwanese people to accept it as well.
Now that the “one country, two systems” promise is no more, CCP has revealed its untrustworthiness.
As China betrayed its promise to Hong Kong, how can they expect Taiwanese people to think that they will keep any of their future promise?
Taiwan has learned its lessons from past experience dealing with CCP. Straightforwardly, most Taiwanese do not trust CCP. We never blindly believe in anything CCP says — which is an important reason why Taiwan won the war against COVID-19.
By the way, it is interesting to note that our people are sometimes unhappy about Taiwan being constantly compared with Hong Kong.
The main reason is simple: some Taiwanese people are quite sensitive about whether Taiwan is considered a country or not. Since Hong Kong is part of China, to some of us, being compared with Hong Kong somewhat wrongs Taiwan’s status.
Hi readers, I hope you find this article interesting!
I post weekly articles about my country Taiwan and Chinese Mandarin. Follow me on Medium for more related articles. You can also follow me on Twitter.
