WHY WE WROTE THIS
The Taiwanese are fervently democratic. In polls, a resounding majority oppose a “one country, two systems” formula for relations with China, à la Hong Kong. But how do they walk that path?
Christian Science Monitor
Date: June 12, 2020
By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer ansd
Ann Scott Tyson Staff writer
Chiang Ying-ying/AP
Hong Kongers participate in a candlelight vigil at Liberty Square in Taipei, Taiwan, June 4, 2020, to mark the 31st anniversary of the Chinese military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
“We don’t want today’s Hong Kong to be tomorrow’s Taiwan,” the young man with a swimmer’s build says one morning as he surveys the waves breaking at his beach in southernmost Pingtung County. “I want Taiwan to be a free, democratic country.”
Mr. Su’s words echo the conversations and slogans one hears increasingly across a fervently democratic Taiwan – and especially in the pro-Hong Kong bookshops and coffeehouses of the capital, Taipei – as mainland China steps up actions weakening Hong Kong’s semi-autonomous status and democratic political system.
Like Hong Kong, Taiwan in the eyes of China’s Communist Party government is a province – governed separately for now but ultimately to be fully united with the mainland under Communist rule, by force if necessary. Beijing vows to take over Taiwan, invoking the same “one country, two systems” formula of Hong Kong policy – a plan rejected, say polls, by more than 85% of Taiwan’s 23 million people. [FULL STORY]
