Demonstrators took to the streets of Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, in March to protest a cross-strait agreement with China on trade in services.Credit Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images
[The New York Times]
By Austin Ramzy
Taiwan’s main political parties say they support Hong Kong residents’ calls for a greater say in choosing their leader following Beijing’s decision to limit electoral reforms in the semiautonomous Chinese city.
President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan.Credit David Chang/European Pressphoto Agency
Self-ruled Taiwan, regarded by China as a part of its territory with which it must eventually be united, is often characterized by deeply fractious politics, with the leading camps split between those who lean toward unification and those who favor independence. But the similar responses to this issue on both sides suggest that China’s Hong Kong policies have undermined its overtures toward Taiwan.
Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, who was born in Hong Kong, expressed concern for the city’s democratic aspirations during a meeting of the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s governing party, which he also heads.
“Democracy and rule of law are core values of the people of Hong Kong and also goals that have been pursued for a long time,” a Kuomintang statement paraphrased Mr. Ma as saying. “People of Taiwan from all walks of life have a high degree of concern and support for Hong Kong people’s continuing fight for universal suffrage.”
Mr. Ma has pushed for closer ties with China, and since he came to office in 2008, trade between the two sides has nearly doubled, reaching $197 billion last year. But such growing links have triggered concern in Taiwan about the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party is using them to extend political control.
An agreement to lower cross-strait trade barriers for service industries triggered huge demonstrations in Taiwan this year, and a group of activists occupied Taiwan’s legislature for more than three weeks to protest the Kuomintang’s efforts to ratify the agreement.
In expressing support for Hong Kong’s democracy advocates, Mr. Ma stopped short of publicly condemning China’s decision. As in his annual commentary on the anniversary of the deadly 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protest movement, he focused on the democratic desires of the Chinese people, rather than laying blame on their leaders.
The opposition Democratic Progressive Party was more critical, calling the Chinese legislature’s decision on Hong Kong’s elections a “pity.”
A party spokesman, Huang Di-ying, was quoted in a statement as saying that the more than 780,000 participants in an informal referendum in Hong Kong on the city’s political future, along with the hundreds of thousands who joined a march on July 1, had “loudly called out for democratic reforms.” The response from Beijing and the Hong Kong authorities “shuts out the people’s call for true general suffrage and casts a shadow over the process of democratization,” Mr. Huang said.
The proposal by the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress states that while Hong Kong’s next chief executive can be chosen by universal suffrage in 2017, the candidates must be approved by a nominating committee. The makeup of that committee, and the threshold of support that a candidate would need to get on the ballot, would probably ensure that no staunch critics of the central government would be allowed to run.
A Chinese government spokesman hit back at the criticism from Taiwan, saying that the electoral proposal did not undermine the “one country, two systems” arrangement under which Hong Kong has functioned since 1997, when the former British colony reverted to Chinese sovereignty.
“It is wrong for a few people in Taiwan to try to use the decision as a pretext to discredit the ‘one country, two systems’ policy, impair Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, and hinder development of cross-strait ties,” said Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news service.
The breadth of the Taiwanese support for Hong Kong democracy indicates that Beijing’s steps on the issue have probably hurt its efforts to win support in Taiwan, said William Stanton, director of the Center for Asia Policy at National Tsing Hua University and a former director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto United States embassy.
“It is very rare that you see both the K.M.T. and the D.P.P. kind of lining up,” he said, referring to the main political parties. “For Ma to come out, I guess he felt he had no choice. For all his faults, I think he really does believe in democracy as he defines it.”
Hong Kong’s democracy advocates have looked to Taiwan for support in recent months and sought to use links with leaders of the Sunflower Movement, the recent campaign against the trade services agreement, to broaden their call for political reform. The Hong Kong government blocked some of the Sunflower Movement leaders from visiting in late June, prior to the city’s annual July 1 pro-democracy march.
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