For all its faults, today’s KMT cannot be accused of being a ‘stooge’ of Beijing, as an opinion maker in Hong Kong argued recently.
The News Lens
Date: 2016/06/21
By: J. Michael Cole
In an otherwise well intentioned June 20 editorial in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, Joseph
Photo Credit: Reuters/達志影像
Lian Yizheng (練乙錚), a former editor in chief at the journal, likens Beijing’s “stooges” in Hong Kong to Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT).
The author argues that KMT “bigwigs” have many things in common with pro-establishment parties in Hong Kong. “The city’s government and business sector,” he writes, “have come to bear all the hallmarks of today’s Kuomintang in Taiwan when dealing with cross-border affairs.”
The KMT, he writes, has lost the anti-communist essence that distinguished it from its nemesis across the Taiwan Strait. “Today’s KMT is everything other than what it was during patriarch Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) rule, as the KMT historically saw commies as its mortal foes.”
Turning to the business community, and again seeing parallels with developments in Hong Kong, Lian writes that Taiwan’s businesspeople “are rushing to kowtow to those on the other side of the strait.” [FULL STORY]
