There are a lot of things people don’t realize about Taiwan. I’ll mention three. First, it is the United States’ 11th largest trading partner worldwide, despite the island’s small population of just under 24 million. Second (and surprisingly given that China maintains iron-fisted control over its strategic industries), Taiwan “owned’ (both figuratively and in the sense of being the equity owner) most of the factories producing semiconductors, advanced information technologies and even some of the key communications equipment in China throughout most of the 1990s and into the following decades. (These Information and Communications Technologies make up the so-called ICT industry. Just think of Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T and Verizon and all of their various competitors as comprising one vast and strategically vital sector). Third and still somewhat under-appreciated in the U.S. is the story of the growth of Taiwan’s vibrant democracy, which started taking root with reforms under…
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government should act more aggressively to combat climate change, and almost as many say the problem is already affecting their community in some way” according to a Pew Research Center survey released on June 23rd this year.
While Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply over the question of whether human activity is contributing “a great deal” (72% Democrats vs 22% Republicans) or only “some” (22% Democrat vs 43% Republicans) to climate change, strong majorities of both parties recognize the human contribution and want the government to do more about it.
The story of this post goes back some twelve years. It’s a story of how bipartisanship and cooperative outreach can lead change. It shows what can be achieved when we focus, with a grounding in science, on the common good. We’re not doing that successfully now with COVID-19. We’re not doing it successfully…
As the U.S. and China continue to face off daily over technology and other issues, I have been listening, as my dog Max and I walk each day, to the brilliant History of Rome podcast series by Mike Duncan (2007-12). One thing is clear from the endless wars which Rome undertook over the course of a millennium against the Latins, the Etruscans, the Samnians and the Carthaginians during the Republic; against each other during the Civil Wars; and against the Greeks; the Syrians, the Parthians and others during the early Empire (which is as far as I’ve gotten so far) – wars were started as often as a result of misreading – or cynically exploiting– an opponents’ real intentions as they were from any meeting of minds over the actual need for conflict. (Mind you – we’re talking here about the miscalculations that get conflicts started, not the logic which…
On January 29, the Hong Kong governent announced potential amendments to its extradition laws that would allow suspects to be extradited to countries with which the city has no formal extradition agreements. According to Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the bill was a response to a murder case in Taiwan, where the suspect had fled back to Hong Kong and now could not be called to face justice. In Lam’s mind, plugging this legal loophole would also fulfill a longtime wish of Beijing: that political dissidents and corrupt officials alike could now be tried in the mainland’s own courts.
Yet for over a month and counting, protest after protest has been staged in the city, with a cumulative participation of 4,228,900. Carrie Lam has been forced to declare the bill first “suspended” and now “dead”—though even this most recent announcement still stops short of full withdrawal, and has failed to appease her critics. Opponents of the bill have decried sending fugitives to a justice system that boasts a 99.9% conviction rate and argued that extradition would violate the autonomy promised to Hong Kong under the “one country, two systems” policy, which was designed in the lead-up to the 1997 handover of the former British colony back to China and which granted Hong Kong its own separate judiciary, legislative system, and free Internet and press. More than being a simple change of law, the bill was seen as a fundamental challengeto the rights and freedoms that have made Hong Kong more than just another Chinese city.
Underpinning the events of the past month has been a recurring pattern of government indecision and inertia fueling the momentum of the movement. Demand after demand went unacknowledged; scenes of police brutality shocked a city whose police force had until then been considered “Asia’s finest”; and demonstrators’ slogans have evolved from calling for the extradition bill’s withdrawal to asking for universal suffrage and democracy. Most recently, protests have moved on to explicitly attract the attention of Chinese from the mainland, as on July 7 a march of 230,000 was held at the West Kowloon station that connects the mainland to Hong Kong, and many slogans were shouted in Mandarin instead of Cantonese. Protesters are no longer simply demanding the bill’s withdrawal, although even that demand alone has yet to be granted, but for fundamental reform. Here’s how it all happened.
Hong Kong in Protest
June 9: Over 1 million people took to the streets protesting the extradition law (1 in 7 of the city’s population). Backlash to the bill came not only from traditional opposition stakeholders but also from the likes of judges and businesses; the crowds that turned up on June 9 reflected this diverse set of converging interests.
June 10: Chief Executive Carrie Lam refused to withdraw the bill and instead doubled down on her commitment to push the amendments forward. In response, organisers called on protesters to reconvene around the Legislative Council (LegCo) building at 10:00 on June 12.
June 12: Tens of thousands of protesters began occupying the roads to the point that lawmakers were unable to gain access to the legislative complex, forcing the debate on the bill to be postponed. Shortly after 3:00—the deadline protesters had set for the government to withdraw the extradition bill—some protesters tried storming LegCo headquarters.
June 15: Lam announced the suspension of the extradition law, stating that no date had been set for the “next step forward.” Protesters remained unhappy Lam ignored their other core demands, and argued that since suspension did not mean withdrawal, the bill could still be reintroduced at any time.
June 16: Two million people packed the streets, more than a quarter of the city’s population, demanding a full withdrawal of the bill, the retraction of the “riot” characterization, the release of all arrested protesters, an investigation of police brutality, and Lam’s resignation.
The Anti-Extradition Protests in a Hong Kong Perspective
The anti-extradition protests have been about far more than extradition. This specific topic may have proven the most perfectly calibrated to the frequencies of public anger, yet crowd sizes, breaking record after record, point to a far deeper wellspring of outrage long fomented by cumulative years of misgovernance—and, most recently, of sharply escalating repression.
In 2003, a law known as “Article 23” was proposed that would criminalize acts of sedition and subversion against mainland China; in 2014, a “Moral and National Education” civics course was announced for all Hong Kong schools in response to Chinese senior leaders’ observations that the city’s youth needed to better “love the motherland”; in 2014, long-awaited constitutional reforms that would have allowed for general elections for the Chief Executive were revealed to only permit voting on a limited number of pre-approved candidates. The next year saw five people, all linked to a Hong Kong bookshop that published books banned in China, disappear. Hong Kong dropped to 70th in the world on the global press freedom index, from 18th best in 2002. In July 2017, Carrie Lam became the Chief Executive despite not being the most popular candidate—she was, of course, favored by Beijing. In October 2018, the government issued its first-ever visa denial to a foreign journalist, after he moderated a Foreign Correspondents’ Club event in August that featured a talk by the convenor of the pro-independence National Party, Andy Chan Ho-tin. The National Party was banned on national security grounds in September that year. In April 2019, shortly after introducing the extradition amendments, nine leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement were convicted for “public nuisance.”
Millions of people in Hong Kong marched in recognition that the extradition bill was simply the latest of many attempts at suppression—and that, should the law pass and vastly expand the reach of China’s retribution, this act of protest could very well be their last.
Yet, in a city that has been both a bridge to and a refuge from the mainland, political space has long been defined by a continuous push-and-pull between authoritarian pressures from Beijing and civic freedoms in Hong Kong: free Internet, tenacious independent journalists, industrious activists, prominent dissidents, and, perhaps most importantly of all, an entire generation of young people who in 2014 came to maturity on the picket lines of protest. The 2003 sedition law was withdrawn, followed by the then-Chief Executive’s resignation after crowds of over 500,000 marched against its implementation. The 2011 national education law was also shelved, having drawn protests of 90,000 in July and 120,000 in September. Members of the 2014 Umbrella Movement might not have brought about the change in the system they dreamed of, but they lefta legacynonetheless. In this city of “liberty without democracy,” described as such (and fittingly so) by Hong Kong’s last colonial governor, citizens have long been voting with their feet. To protest in the streets of Hong Kong is to partake in, and add to, this shared inheritance of civil protest.
Demonstrators this time around knew what to be afraid of. Throughout the week, departing protesters formed unusually long lines at subway stations’ single-use ticket machines, because cash is less easily tracked. Demonstrators turned off location tracking on their phones, and deleted conversations and photos on social media and messaging apps; switching, in the latter case, from the typically most popular WhatsApp to the better encrypted Telegram, which became the #1 most downloaded app in the city. Yet, for all its encryption, protesters may not be fully safe, as police have reportedly collected identification information from protest group chats with tens of thousands of members; on June 11, authorities arrested the administrator of a group chat of 20,000, Ivan Ip, despite Ip being at his home miles away from the protest site. One day later, Telegram reported experiencing powerful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks from “IP addresses coming mostly from China.” Gas masks, goggles, caps, and helmets helped protect protesters against tear gas and pepper spray—and they also helped hide their faces. Following major demonstrations, police have been searching vehicles and hospital rooms for protesters, with one driver arrested on July 2 for possessing “offensive weapons”—a pair of scissors and his asthma drugs. As of July 7, 61 have been arrested on protest-related charges. One of them is 14 years old.
What comes of the anti-extradition movement is of paramount importance; at the same time, it almost doesn’t matter. If the protests succeed, they should inspire the world. If the protests fail, they should still inspire the world. Governed by a system where the ballot is largely meaningless, people are voting with their bodies instead. Hong Kongers are more afraid, and more determined, than ever before.Hong Kong Observer
Due to the situation in Hong Kong after the implementation of the National Security Law, the identity of the primary author of this piece has been removed for safety concerns.M. Terry Cooke
M. Terry Cooke is a Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He founded the China Partnership of Greater Philadelphia in 2011.@mterrycooke
TECHtonic shifts between the U.S. and China are shaking up geopolitical relations and global supply chains. Media analysis, and even more thoughtful think tank analysis, tends to interpret what’s happening as either temporary instability attributable to the national leadership currently in place (pick your favorite flavor — tart Trump or lingering after-taste Xi) — or to a more permanent change resulting from zero-sum technology competition as we head into the 21st century. Understanding the underlying reality is more complex — somewhat akin to attempting to forecast the risk, and factor in real estate valuations, for the seismic dynamics of the San Andreas Fault, While simple and clear-cut answers tend to beguile, the ‘science’ is always more complex. Here’s an excellent piece of analysis by media outlier The Economist rigorously interpreting the significance of some of the latest tremors, especially the differential pressures bearing on software and hardware as the U.S. and China move toward de-coupling:
GC3Strategy.com 