FCW
Date: Aug 28, 2019
By: Steve Kelman
I am spending this week chairing an executive education program for 45 mid- and senior-level civil servants from Taiwan, and of course following the daily news reports on the protests in Hong Kong. So this week I will depart from my normal blog themes to reflect on the significance of what is going on in these two small places.
I have been talking with my Taiwanese students about how it is that young people in Taiwan are ardent advocates of their country keeping itself outside China’s control. And we all have been watching the hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people (in a place with a population of only 7 million), mostly young, taking to the streets to protest Chinese control.
A sober view of the world's realities suggests that this should not be happening. This is so for a number of reasons. For starters, both Hong Kong and Taiwan are Confucian societies, whose cultural tradition is based on hierarchy and those below listening to those above, and on harmony, not rocking the boat. A common view — and one eagerly embraced by the Chinese government – is that Chinese culture therefore is inconsistent with democracy, which is often presented as a Western rather than an Asian idea.
The second reason is the rise of China. China’s economic rise has been very dramatic. In 1997, when Hong Kong was returned to China, tiny Hong Kong’s GNP was fully 18% of China’s. Today Hong Kong’s GNP is just 3% of China’s. China is alive with business opportunities for people in both places. [FULL STORY]