Hong Kong Was Once Passionate About China. Now, It’s Indifferent or Contemptuous.

By Andrew Higgins

Hong Kong’s harbor. The attachment some Hong Kongers once felt with the mainland is fading.

HONG KONG — As a young student learning classical Chinese, I stopped off in Hong Kong nearly 40 years ago to catch a slow train up to Beijing, then still known as Peking. 

At the station, I bought a Chinese-language magazine of politics, culture and ideas that I was advised to hide when I crossed the border out of what was then still a British colony into China.
With only a rudimentary grasp of modern Chinese, I spent much of my three-day journey north trying to decipher the Hong Kong magazine’s articles that were wrestling with China’s past political convulsions under Mao, its present challenges and future possibilities. 

It was my first taste of what was then the city’s raucous and passionate debate about China.
Hong Kongers at the time were endlessly curious about life across the border and, tugged by bonds of family, culture and in some case politics, saw their city as part of a bigger Chinese story.
But returning to Hong Kong this month after many years away, I found that the magazine was gone, along with what had been Hong Kong’s deeply felt role as a place inextricably tied to the rest of China, not just economically but intellectually and emotionally.

“People, particularly the young, are just not interested in China,” said Lee Yee, 83, a retired former magazine editor. “They don’t care.”

As the city’s political elite have become increasingly beholden to China, and its business leaders ever more intertwined with the mainland, ordinary citizens have pulled away, becoming less engaged.
“People, particularly the young, are just not interested in China. They don’t care,” Lee Yee, the 83-year-old founding editor of that now defunct magazine, known first as “The Seventies” and later as “The Nineties,” said over coffee in a Hong Kong retirement home. 

China, he added, doesn’t stir excited discussion these days, only indifference or contempt.
In a busy shopping district on Hong Kong Island, a big sign still juts out over the street advertising the location of Causeway Bay Books, an emporium of weighty political tomes and salacious potboilers about China and its leaders, many of them banned on the mainland. 

But the shop — several of whose staff members were abducted in 2015 and sent across the border into detention — has vanished, replaced by a sex toys store.
The demise of Mr. Lee’s magazine and the disappearance of Causeway Bay Books are small signs of a larger victory for the Chinese Communist Party in its long campaign to prevent Hong Kong becoming a “base of subversion” against its rule.
But by squeezing the finances of journals critical of Beijing, kidnapping booksellers and generally limiting the space for open discussion of China, Beijing has promoted what could be a more dangerous threat to its grip on Hong Kong: distance from and disinterest in China.

A message from protesters in the Mong Kok district.

“Young Hong Kongers want nothing to do with China. They have no more interest in subverting China than they do in subverting Zimbabwe,” said Liu Kin-ming, a veteran Hong Kong journalist who now works as a consultant, advising companies on political and business affairs in China.
This is a dramatic turn for a city that, under British rule, sheltered and supported Sun Yat-sen, the leader of a 1911 revolution that brought down’s China’s last imperial dynasty. 

Hong Kong also gave refuge and sustenance to prominent revolutionaries working to overthrow the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek in the 1930s and 40s.
Hong Kong played such an important role in shaping China’s history in the 20th century that, ahead of its handover to Chinese rule in 1997, many in the city seriously believed that the big question was not so much how China would change Hong Kong once it regained sovereignty but how tiny Hong Kong would change China.
Nobody believes that now.
Instead, despair has set in over China’s direction. 

And with it is a growing rejection of the country to which most people in Hong Kong are bound by ethnicity but that many now shun as an alien power.
Jin Zhong, the longtime editor of Kaifang, another China-focused magazine that has shut down its print version in recent years, though it still appears online, said hope and expectation about China had, despite its stunning economic success, curdled into bitter repudiation.

A big, blue sign still juts out over the street advertising the location of Causeway Bay Books, but it has been replaced by a sex toys store.

Hong Kongers “have totally lost faith in China,” said Mr. Jin, who now lives in New York. 

“For decades Hong Kong opposed ‘one-party rule’ on the mainland but nothing changed. All they got was one-man rule instead,” he said, referring to the Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. 

“Everyone feels disappointment. Why care about China? What is the point?”
Close links to China abound, particularly in Hong Kong’s economy, which has grown increasingly dependent on money from and trade with the mainland. 

And Hong Kong’s newspapers are filled each day with ever more slavish declarations of “love” for China by business people trying to protect their investments on the mainland.
But the ties of the heart and mind have withered away.
The result is the blunt, handwritten message pinned to the back of a protester I met last week: “Hong Kong Is Not China.”
Under British colonial rule, most people in Hong Kong, including fierce anti-Communists, felt undeniably Chinese in the face of a system run at its highest levels by Britons who often couldn’t speak their language, didn’t know much about their culture and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle far beyond the reach of all but the richest Chinese tycoons.
But the British, whose obvious foreignness and colonial arrogance helped solidify a shared sense of being part of China among their subjects, have given way to a new elite of mandarins from Beijing. They also rarely speak the local language, Cantonese, also live apart and often seem no less — and sometimes even more — out of tune with ordinary Hong Kongers.

Sun Yat-sen memorial park. Under British rule, the city sheltered and supported Sun, the leader of a 1911 revolution that brought down’s China’s last imperial dynasty.

Even Communist Party-controlled newspapers in the city that were run largely by Hong Kongers during British rule are now staffed at their senior levels by mainlanders who view Hong Kong through a prism fixed decades ago by China’s late paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping. 

He regarded the city as a greedy, self-indulgent place that had no real interest in politics and so could easily reabsorbed into “the motherland.” 

In Hong Kong after 1997, Mr. Deng promised, “horses will still run, stocks will still sizzle and dancers will still dance.”
That promise has largely been kept so far. 

But it has come in tandem with a steady diminishment of the city as a place engaged in shaping China’s future.
This reduced role, said Eddie Chu, an elected member of Hong Kong’s Legislature and an early champion of the city’s localist movement, has fed a widespread sense of despondent detachment from the rest of China.
“As a city confronting an empire, it seems an obvious expectation that we are doomed,” he said.
For a foreigner, Hong Kong still feels unquestionably Chinese, its streets flashing with neon Chinese characters, its graveyards filled with tombstones recording ancestral homes in faraway provinces, its cacophonous restaurants offering endless varieties of Chinese cuisine. 

But for many Hong Kongers these are no more signs of the place being part of Communist-ruled China than the magnificent collections of Chinese art in Taiwan are proof that the island belongs to Beijing.
Mr. Lee, the editor, said it pained him to see this but added that the Communist Party had only itself to blame. 

He said it has treated critics in Hong Kong who considered themselves Chinese patriots as enemies and repeatedly frustrated hopes in the former colony that the system in China might become less repressive.
“Loving China,” he said, became synonymous with “loving the party,” something he and most people in Hong Kong don’t want to do. 

“I used to be a patriot. But of course I am not a patriot now.”

‘Prepared to Die’: Hong Kong Protesters Embrace Hard-Core Tactics, Challenge Beijing

The resistance, which has mainstream support, is the biggest rebellion against China’s government since Xi Jinping took power

By Natasha Khan and Wenxin Fan

Hong Kong police detain a protester on Monday.

HONG KONG—In 2014, a protester named Chloe camped out on city streets, chanted slogans and planted “seeds of hope,” part of a 79-day occupation of major roads.
The protesters’ demands for greater democracy were ignored.
This summer, the civil servant, who is in her 20s, has zip tied metal barriers together to block roads and dug bricks out of sidewalks to throw at police.
Her primary role is to be “arrest support”—ready to hire lawyers for detained protesters and help their families with an emergency plan.
“Some of them are prepared to die for the movement,” said Chloe.
“I am also willing to die for it.”
Hong Kong’s protests against the mainland government’s increasing reach are emerging as bigger, more frequent and more violent than previous pro-democracy movements.
In a contrast to 2014, when demonstrations were largely led by students, the current action has been embraced by a broader cross-section of Hong Kong society—including civil servants, pop stars, doctors, shopkeepers and people of all ages. 
And those taking part in more radical acts of civil disobedience are finding wider support.
Hard-core current protesters have largely rejected the strategies of veteran leaders, whose approach is seen to have failed.
Actions are mostly organized by anonymous leaders of small groups.
In 2014, named student leaders became well known figures.

An elderly woman is helped after police fired tear gas during Monday’s demonstration.

The shift in attitude means Hong Kong’s resistance has become the biggest open rebellion against China’s ruling Communist Party since Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
“There’s a feeling among many that there’s no other option, that physical confrontation is the only way for the regime to listen to the voices of Hong Kongers,” said Jeffrey Ngo, chief researcher at pro-democracy group Demosisto.
Mr. Ngo said he doesn’t use violence himself in the current protests, but understands why some have resorted to it.
Residents have become increasingly dissatisfied as the government has dug in its heels and police have cracked down. 
Police on the front lines have embraced the use of tear gas—even in residential neighborhoods. Officers have beaten protesters with batons and stormed into shopping malls and subway stations to bring demonstrators to heel. 
Since June 9, 420 people have been arrested, and some have been charged with crimes that carry up to 10-year prison terms.
Beijing has endorsed the way the police have handled the protests and has sent signals it is losing patience with the unrest.
Last week the Chinese army’s Hong Kong garrison released a video showing soldiers performing riot drills and taking part in mock street battles.
Protests across the city continued over the past weekend, the ninth in a row, some with violence, including in tourist and residential areas.
On Monday a protester-led strike disrupted the subways and airport, and kept thousands home from work.
Carrie Lam on Monday, when she condemned the violent protests.

Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-backed chief executive, said Monday that the city was becoming dangerous and unstable, and condemned violent protests, in her first public comments in two weeks. She didn’t accede to any of the protesters’ demands.
Demonstrations began in early June as a fight against an extradition bill that would allow people to be sent to China for trial.
The bill was set aside but not formally withdrawn, and protests morphed into a broader ideological battle to preserve Hong Kong’s civil rights against the encroaching authoritarianism of China.
That has come along with irritation with changes stemming from mainland immigration and tourism, including competition for college spots and real estate, the growing necessity for Mandarin-language ability, and even the erosion of the manners Hong Kong people expect when waiting in lines.
The unrest has weighed on tourism and economic activity, and hit business sentiment and financial markets.
The intensity of the protests has alarmed Beijing.
Chinese officials responsible for Hong Kong have issued rebukes and urged the city’s leaders to punish violent demonstrators, calling a return to law and order Hong Kong’s “most pressing priority.”
Chinese army officers have said they are ready to step in if needed, though Hong Kong’s government has dismissed the possibility of calling in troops, a move that would evoke comparisons to the killing of hundreds of protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Chinese officials have blamed the crisis on "foreign" influences.

Civil servants protested on Friday.

The uprising is a test of Beijing’s position that Hong Kong must not be used as a base to undermine China’s ruling Communist Party.
Lam, in her comments Monday, said some extremists’ call for a revolution—a common chant on the streets in recent weeks—has changed the nature of the protest and are a challenge to China’s sovereignty.
In recent years, Xi has consolidated his power and taken action against dissidents at home, including an iron fist policy in the Muslim-majority Northwest colony of East Turkestan.
A national security law passed in 2015 empowered the government to make more arrests of rights lawyers and suppress criticism on social media.
Hong Kong citizens have raised the high-profile crackdowns as reasons to distrust the Chinese system.
A bilateral treaty between China and the U.K.—made when the city was handed back to China in 1997—guarantees the independence of Hong Kong’s legal system and freedom of expression until 2047.
Xi, however, delivered a speech in 2017 declaring that any overt challenges to China’s authority could undermine the foundation of that system.

Beijing Backs Hong Kong Police's Handling of Increasingly Violent Protests: In a rare news conference, China’s top office for Hong Kong affairs offered support for further efforts by the city's authorities to punish violence and uphold the "rule of law".

The broad-based support for the protests is proving a tactical challenge for Beijing.
A tough response would spur public outcry, and China’s style of quashing opposition through censorship and imprisoning dissidents would be difficult under Hong Kong’s laws defending freedom of information.
The protests have largely been mobilized through the encrypted Telegram messaging app, Facebook and a Reddit-like website called LIHKG.
When prominent pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, a leader in the 2014 demonstrations, was in prison during the first two weeks of the current protests, his friends ran his social media accounts on his behalf.
People familiar with the Hong Kong government’s strategy say Lam plans to wait out the unrest, betting that as students return to school in September the crisis will be contained.
Lam has made no public effort to reach out to the myriad groups that make up the movement.
Protesters say they have no such timeline and will retreat only if the government responds.
Joshua Wong, a well-known pro-democracy leader from the 2014 protests, took part in a demonstration last month.

The willingness to use violence during the Hong Kong protests was a fringe idea only five years ago. Since the handover, protests have largely consisted of peaceful marches that ended at sunset, or orderly candlelight vigils.
In 2014, the so-called Umbrella Movement protests became large and long-lasting, but the few tussles with police were quickly condemned by the broader movement.
Tear gas was used once.
Chloe, the civil servant, said more aggressive protests are the only way to advocate for their cause.
She describes herself as someone who would rather go shopping and buy makeup than be out all night in the stifling summer heat to battle police officers.
Now, like many protesters, she gets geared up before each protest: umbrellas to shield against pepper spray and gun-fired bean bag rounds; eye goggles to help reduce the effects of tear gas; a helmet; and face mask to hide her identity from police and media cameras.
She often changes out of sight of security cameras, or behind comrades’ umbrellas.

Hong Kong Protests Intensify
Hong Kong demonstrations have grown in size and violence, and the police have responded with heavy force.

An estimated one million people marches in the first major protest of the summer.

Protesters demonstrate outside the Legislative Council complex. Police respond with tear gas, beanbag rounds and rubber bullets. 


Chloe says her resolve has deepened in the past few weeks after authorities ignored protesters’ demands.
“There’s the feeling now that, since so many of us could be arrested later, that we need to give it our all for this cause,” she said.
“There are no longer limits to what we can give.”
Justin, another protester on the front lines, talks less about ideology.
The 19-year-old unemployed school dropout was radicalized after he choked on tear gas in the first major protester clash with the police on June 12.
That day’s images of riot police pointing rubber-bullet guns at protesters and chasing them down city streets shocked city residents.
The day’s clash also prompted Lam to suspend the extradition bill.
“They would ignore you unless you do something to show how firm you are,” Justin said.
“Carrie Lam is the one that taught us this.”
Police fire tear gas during a protest in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong on Sunday. 

He decided to crash the July 1 government ceremony celebrating the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China.
Expecting a crackdown by police, he and strangers he met in a peaceful assembly days before bought heat-resistant gloves and formed a 10-person squad to grab tear gas canisters and dunk them into the buckets of water, neutralizing their spray.
That night, protesters broke into the city’s legislature, demanding election reform, or what is known as universal suffrage.
Justin acted as a porter, ferrying supplies for an occupation until the plan was aborted and the invaders left before the police arrived.
“If we ask for the sky, we’ll get a window,” said Justin.
“If we just ask for the window, we get nothing.”
The break-in to the legislature—during which protesters unfurled a banner that said “No rioters, only tyranny”—catapulted Brian Leung to the forefront as one of the few known faces of the movement.

THE FIVE DEMANDS
Hong Kong protesters have taken to the streets to advocate for a number of appeals they say must be addressed:

1. Complete withdrawal of an extradition bill that would allow suspects to be tried in China
2. Retraction of the “riot” designation of a June 12 protest
3. Release and exoneration of arrested protesters
4. Formation of an independent commission of inquiry into police handling of the protests
5. Dissolving the Legislative Council by executive order and the immediate implementation of genuine universal suffrage.

Most of the ardent protesters use surgical or antipollution masks to conceal their faces.
Mr. Leung, 25, ripped off his mask as he stood in the middle of the legislative chamber, urging people to stay and occupy the space.
“The escalation of punishment demands an escalation of sacrifice,” the soft-spoken Mr. Leung said later.
He is due to begin the third year of his Ph.D. studying authoritarianism and democracy at the University of Washington in the fall.
“When you look at what other people have given up for this movement, sacrifice seems less unimaginable.”
In the 2014 protests, Mr. Leung mostly stuck to the intellectual side of things, editing the University of Hong Kong’s Undergrad magazine.
This time, Mr. Leung risked arrest by trying to convince others that occupying the legislative building is a now-or-never moment.
His action echoes a message spray-painted outside the vandalized building: “You taught me peaceful protest doesn’t work.”
Brian Leung took off his mask during a protest inside the legislative chamber of the government headquarters on July 1.

Mr. Leung has since fled Hong Kong and faces possible arrest if he returns.
The shift to radicalism has its roots in a 2016 protest where protesters clashed violently with police after the clearance of unlicensed street food sellers—the so-called Fishball Revolution.
Two leaders of a party demanding greater rights for local people, Ray Wong, an interior designer, and university student Edward Leung, were arrested and charged, in a rare move, with inciting a riot.
Mr. Wong fled to Germany, where he was last year granted asylum, and Mr. Leung was sentenced to six years in jail in Hong Kong.
Mr. Wong, 25, said the failure of peaceful protests in 2014 had led him to found the more radical group advocating for the rights of local people, who in his view were being marginalized by mainland immigrants and tourists.
One of the group’s causes was to target the practice of “parallel trading” by mainlanders who came to Hong Kong to buy less expensive or higher quality goods, such as infant formula, creating local shortages.
Meanwhile, mainland buyers of real estate have driven prices higher, and mainlanders take some coveted jobs and university spots.
He and Mr. Leung began using the slogan “Restore Hong Kong. The revolution of our time,” a chant that has emerged again among current protesters.
Some protesters consider Mr. Leung, confined to a maximum-security prison, to be a political prisoner, and a local filmmaker’s documentary about his life sold out in June.
“We Miss You, Edward Leung,” one protester graffitied under a bridge after a recent clash.
“I want you to understand this: Because of your love of Hong Kong, you have shown incredible bravery and changed Hong Kong’s history,” Mr. Leung said in a Facebook letter posted on his behalf last month.
“But please do not let hatred rule you.”
In a challenge for authorities, most groups of more-radical protesters are self-organized and unpredictable, and coordinators avoid the limelight.
Protests can spring up within minutes via encrypted message apps or even just among clusters of people on the streets.
Participants sometimes have no idea what is occurring a block over.
As many as 10,000 can gather quickly and occupy streets for hours, faced off against riot police, then disappear in a flash.
Edward Leung, shown above before sentencing, was convicted for his role in 2016 protests.

“They’re like sponges, absorbing information from each other,” said Brian Leung, the man who unveiled his face in the legislative council.
“There isn’t a commanding pyramid structure but there are nodes, like a social network.”
Many on the streets have become friends, forging a sense of camaraderie and unity on the front lines without any direct leadership.
“Brothers on Hikes, Each on its Own” goes one campaign.
“You’re not a Hong Konger until you have tasted tear gas,” is a common refrain.
Amei, a fresh college graduate who loves graphic novels, first joined the protests alone.
After seeing a lawmaker use a megaphone to host a discussion, she bought her own speaker and began to organize brainstorming discussions for hundreds of strangers.
With her newly made friends, she is now planning to print graphical brochures about Hong Kong’s protest history.
“I’m just a girl and what I can do each time is limited,” she said.
“But there’s no limit how many projects I can do.”
Some of the stalwarts of the pro-democracy movement have stepped to the background, offering support to the radical newcomers to protest the way they see fit.
Roy Kwong, a 36-year-old legislator and romantic novelist, intercedes with police at protests to minimize injuries during clashes.
Joshua Wong, 22, the most internationally known face of the 2014 protests, then often making fiery speeches urging protesters to never give up, has participated in many protests since his release from jail on June 17 and has commented that there is no leader this year.
On Saturday, Mr. Wong handed out McDonald’s vouchers, donated by supporters who heard protesters were running out of money after spending on transport and equipment.

Roy Kwong spoke through a megaphone on July 1. 

The Civil Human Rights Front, an old-guard umbrella organization that comprises about 50 NGOs, pan-democratic parties and other organizations focusing on human-rights issues, has organized some of the biggest rallies over the past two months, including one that they said attracted two million people on June 16.
Bonnie Leung, the group’s 32-year-old vice-convener, said she now receives inquiries from citizens asking for help on how to organize their own marches: for example, how to apply for a permit or arrange field marshals.
The group itself is also planning more protests.
“The people of Hong Kong have woken up in the past two months, and they know that this time it will take more to get the government to listen to us,” said Ms. Leung, whose group doesn’t advocate violence but said they understand why some feel it is necessary.
“The government has left us with no choice. Until they address our demands, we will not stand down.”

The Umbrella Revolution

In Hong Kong, It’s Now a Revolution

What started out as an unexpectedly large demonstration in late April against a piece of legislation—an extradition bill—has become a call for democracy in the territory as well as independence from China and the end of communism on Chinese soil.
by Gordon G. Chang


Defying stern warnings from both the local government and Beijing, people in seven districts in Hong Kong—most notably teachers, airport workers, and civil servants—participated in a general strike Monday, shutting down portions of the territory. For instance, more than a hundred flights were cancelled.
The strike followed weeks of sometimes violent protests in the territory, a semi-autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China. 

Youthful demonstrators over the weekend surrounded and attacked police stations, and enraged residents drove riot police from their neighborhoods.
Roving protesters, dressed for urban combat, created a series of confrontations across the territory, even closing the main tunnel linking Hong Kong Island with the rest of the territory. 

A beleaguered police force, demoralized and fatigued, was unable to keep up with the mobile bands of radicalized youth.

Some of the protest messages were impossible to miss. 

In Wanchai’s Golden Bauhinia Square, a magnet for tourists from other parts of China, kids spray-painted a statue with provocative statements such as “The Heavens will destroy the Communist Party” and “Liberate Hong Kong.”
In Hong Kong, revolution is in the air. 

What started out as an unexpectedly large demonstration in late April against a piece of legislation—an extradition bill—has become a call for democracy in the territory as well as independence from China and the end of communism on Chinese soil.
Almost nobody thinks any of these things can happen, but they forget that Chinese rebellions and revolutions often start at the periphery and then work their way to the center. 

The Qing dynasty of the Manchus, the last imperial reign, unraveled from the edges, as did others.
Hong Kong, perched on the edge of the Asian continent far from the center of communist power in Beijing, may be where the end of Chinese communism begins.

How could the mighty Communist Party of China fall?
Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, knows that very few in the rest of China, the “mainland” as it is called, sympathize with the Hong Kong protestors, especially because they challenge “China,” as the party likes to call itself. 

Yet the demonstrators in Hong Kong have succeeded at pushing their government around, almost at will, forcing Carrie Lam, the chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, to “suspend” consideration of the extradition legislation.
And that is why Xi must be concerned. 

Mainland residents have grievances of their own, especially now that the economy is crumbling fast, and might become inspired to treat their own leaders roughly.
Hong Kong protestors, worryingly for Xi, seemed determined to spread their provocative message. Recently, they have been targeting mainland tourists to Hong Kong, seeking to inform them of their grievances. 

Demonstrators have, for instance, gathered in places where Chinese visitors congregate, including a rail station, and have used the AirDrop app to spread protest posters to mainlanders.
Perhaps in response, Beijing late last month stopped trying to prevent those “inside the Great Firewall” from knowing about the Hong Kong disturbances and instead attempted to tar the protestors by publicizing their violent acts.

Are mainlanders encouraged by the Hong Kong “riots,” as Beijing calls them? 

In the first week of July, up to ten thousand residents of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, took to the streets for days to protest a proposed waste-incineration plant.
The mass demonstration there did not spread, as other protests in China have in the past, but in the future cascading disturbances could overwhelm an already troubled political system. 

As Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania told the National Interest, “the disintegration of the People’s Republic of China is now under way.”
Xi might be able to end, or at least tamp down, the Hong Kong protests by forcing Lam to capitulate—formally “withdrawing” the extradition bill from consideration and resigning—but he is unlikely to do that. 

He does not want anyone, especially mainlanders, to think they are also able to overpower their leaders.
In an especially tone-deaf press conference Monday, Lam, standing next to eight grim-faced ministers, made no further concessions, either symbolic or substantive, as she struck all the wrong notes if she was trying to calm the situation in her embattled city. 

Her stern and sometimes ominous words—Lam warned the territory was on the “path of no return”—seemed aimed at an audience of one: Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping.
Xi, it appears, will keep Lam in power. 

Her resignation, demanded by many, would undoubtedly trigger calls for universal suffrage for the election of a successor. 

Lam was “elected” in 2017 by the Election Committee, a body of only twelve hundred members in a city of more than seven million. 

Due to various mechanisms, the resulting “small-circle election” effectively gives Beijing a decisive voice in choosing the chief executive.
The demand for an all-inclusive electorate in fact started seventy-nine days of wide-scale protests in 2014, the “Occupy Central” demonstrations.
That protest, sometimes called the “Umbrella Revolution,” did not look like a revolution—sustained action to change the form of government—but today’s protests are starting to do so. 

Popular attitudes have visibly hardened this year as Hong Kong residents have taken the view that this is, as they say, the “last stand” for their society. 

There are traditional pro-Beijing elements in the city, such as the triads and triad-like organizations, but few in the Hong Kong mainstream now trust China. 

In the middle of June, one pro-democracy march drew an estimated two million people.
At the end of that month, Ho-Fung Hung of Johns Hopkins University noted that the authorities then thought they could outlast the protestors but he disagreed with their assessment, believing the demonstrations could last until September, the fifth anniversary of the Umbrella movement, or even to October 1, when Beijing plans to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic.
Now, Hung looks prescient. 

There is no end to the demonstrations, now in their ninth-straight week, in sight.
Sustainability is the key for the protestors if they want to win freedom from China. 

“They keep saying ‘be like water,’” Michael Yon, the American war correspondent and author, told the National Interest over the weekend, noting young protestors are modeling themselves after martial arts legend Bruce Lee.

“I keep telling them be like Poland. Never quit and you can actually be free. Maybe. But never quit.”
Yon, now reporting from the streets in Hong Kong, is on to something. 

Hong Kong people may be able to inspire just enough disgruntled mainlanders to shake their regime to the ground. 

If one thing is evident after months of protests, the youthful pro-democracy demonstrators are determined, as are millions of residents of the territory.
In a contest where neither side will concede, anything can happen. 

Chinese regimes, let us remember, fray at the edges and then sometimes fall apart. 

It could happen this time as well.

Hong Kong tabloid with China links tails visiting US-Australian academic

Macquarie University Chinese history lecturer Kevin Carrico subject to detailed reporting of his movements on a recent visit
By Kate Lyons

The front page of Wen Wei Po showing the activities of US-Australian academic Kevin Carrico during his visit to Hong Kong. 

When Kevin Carrico landed back in Australia on Monday after spending a week in Hong Kong, his friend sent him a link to the front page of a Hong Kong tabloid.
It was covered with pictures of Carrico and details of his trip.
It seems reporters for the paper, Wen Wei Po, which has close ties to Beijing, had been following him all week, reporting details of who he met, where he went, even when he returned to his hotel to change his shirt.
There were photographs of the US-Australian academic, who works for Macquarie University in Sydney where he researches Chinese history and society, standing in the street.
Another shows him at the airport about to leave the country and a third shows him in conversation with a friend in a restaurant, that was clearly taken by someone sitting a few tables away.
Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po featuring in-depth reporting of the movements of visiting Sydney academic Kevin Carrico. 

“Wen Wei Po is very, very closely linked with the Liaison Office, which is Beijing’s office in Hong Kong,” Carrico said.
“I don’t know if this is an attempt to build up pressure to get me banned from Hong Kong, or to intimidate me from returning to Hong Kong.”
Carrico is a US citizen and Australian permanent resident and has just received a large research grant from the Australian government to undertake a project examining tensions between Beijing and Hong Kong.
He said he might have been targeted because he writes about Chinese power in Hong Kong, which inevitably sometimes leads to discussion of Hong Kong independence.
While Hong Kong is part of China, it is a special administrative region, with its own government, legal system and policies.
However, there are concerns that Beijing is making moves to bring the regions more firmly under its control.
The newspaper articles allege Carrico “has close ties with members of the Hong Kong independence organisation” and “secretly came to Hong Kong”, as well as listing all those Carrico met with during his week in the country.
The articles also included inane observations such as: “After that, Carrico returned to the hotel where he was staying and changed his shirt before attending a party;” and, “After the lecture, Carrico and a man returned to the hotel after eating at a nearby Korean restaurant.”
Carrico said independence was a topic that sometimes came up in his work, and he knew people who supported it, but there was nothing illegal or illegitimate about that.

“It’s a violation of the freedom of speech promised to Hong Kong to pretend that discussion of independence is illegal,” Carrico said.
“I always say in the US cannabis was illegal but it wasn’t illegal to talk about cannabis, to talk about legalising cannabis, I think a similar sort of thing regarding HK independence.”
Carrico said the articles did at least make sense of the woman on the train who followed him throughout his first day in the country.
“I noticed a lady, maybe in her 30s, I felt like she was looking at me occasionally. I’m not a celebrity or anything close to that, but I thought, she’s wearing a University of Oxford sweatshirt, maybe she read my book or maybe she was thinking I look funny, I don’t know.”
The woman followed him off the train, into a shopping centre, even waiting for him outside the toilets.
“In a city of seven million people, even in a shopping mall, it’s unlikely you keep running into the same person,” he said.
After Carrico became concerned he twice tried to photograph the woman.
The first time, when she was riding behind him on an escalator she turned around and faced the other way, Carrico said.
The second time, she hid behind a tree.

“Today’s Wen Wei Po article, where I take up the entire front page of a newspaper, begins to answer some of those questions. The people who were following me were probably from that newspaper. At the same time, that raises some pretty major questions. How did this newspaper know I was there? Do they have access to border control? How were they able to start following me the day after I arrived and how did they manage to keep a tail on me for what seems like an entire week?”
Carrico was light-hearted about some parts of the experience.
The Wen Wei Po article devotes several paragraphs to a talk he gave and Carrico joked that he wished he could have got similar media coverage for his speech before it was held.
“I could have got more people there. It wasn’t as well attended as I would have liked.”
But there were other points he found less funny.
“The article mentions my wife. They can write whatever they want about me, but I’d prefer they leave my family out of it.”
Carrico, who has been travelling to Hong Kong for 15 years said his experience would not deter him from continuing to do so, but he hoped it was not a sign of things to come.
“Hong Kong can’t follow China’s path of banning journalists and researchers if it wants to call itself Asia’s world city. I think the Hong Kong government might consider voicing their support for academic freedom, because clearly this is not a very welcoming message to send to academics.”

Andy Chan Ho-tin: President Trump should target Hong Kong in trade war with China

• Andy Chan Ho-tin who advocates independence said the United States should extend its trade war with China to Hong Kong
• He says that could help Hong Kong preserve its autonomy and freedoms from communist China.

By Kelly Olsen

A Hong Kong politician wants the United States to sanction his city as part of its ongoing trade war with China in hopes of somehow achieving his dream of independence and democracy.
Analysts and investors largely agree that sounds far-fetched though some wouldn't completely rule it out.
Andy Chan Ho-tin, a member of the Hong Kong National Party, says China poses an increasing existential threat to local rights and freedoms since British colonial rule ended in 1997. 

He has become a local lightning rod, criticized by many Communists for advocating independence but also seen as a symbol of free speech after Chinese and Hong Kong officials called for a public address of his this week to be canceled.
In that address, he called for the U.S. to review legislation that governs its relations with the territory, condemn Hong Kong government officials for suppressing human rights and target mainland Chinese financial assets in Hong Kong.
"Think about how much more clout the U.S. would have on China if the current trade war extends to Hong Kong," he said Tuesday in the closely watched speech to the city's Foreign Correspondents' Club, adding that such a move could strike a real "economic blow" to Beijing.
"Many of the Chinese already store their actual capital here," Chan said.

While many analysts have expressed concern over the threat to Hong Kong posed in recent years by tighter Chinese control, experts deemed the city unlikely to play a role in the trade war.
"I think the Hong Kong issue is not something that is right up there on the Trump hit list," Tim Summers, a lecturer in Chinese studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told CNBC.
"The U.S. government's basic strategic interests are in Hong Kong continuing to be treated separate from the rest of China for all sorts of economic, financial, business reasons," he said. 

"And that's why these policy instruments are in place."

'Very strong'
The United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 allows Hong Kong to be treated as a "non-sovereign entity distinct from China for the purposes of U.S. domestic law," according to a State Department report to Congress in May, which noted the U.S. "recognizes Hong Kong as a separate customs territory."
Victoria Tin-bor Hui, an associate professor in the political science department at the University of Notre Dame, said that "no one will want to predict what Donald Trump is likely or unlikely to do," but she stressed it is important to understand the context of Chan's view on the U.S.
Hui said it reflects opinion among Hong Kong "localists" who think more U.S. pressure on China could stem growing Chinese influence, which they see as problematic even if they don't seek independence.
"The only country on earth that has any leverage on China is the U.S.," she said, describing their thinking.
The U.S. does express concern about political developments in Hong Kong, such as in the May report, which said Chinese central government actions were "inconsistent" with its promises to uphold Hong Kong's autonomy.
But that State Department report described trade relations with Hong Kong as "very strong," saying that the biggest U.S. bilateral trade surplus in the world, at $34.5 billion, is with the territory.
David Roche, president and global strategist at research firm Independent Strategy, said any hope that Hong Kong will become a pawn in the broader U.S.-China conflict shows a lack of understanding about how such geopolitical conflicts play out.
"His idea that the U.S. is going to some way ride into the equation and take measures which in some way help Hong Kong independence, that is just not on — even from Trump," Roche said.
Richard Harris, chief executive at investment manager Port Shelter, echoed the sentiment that the chances are low, but said it's not inconceivable Hong Kong could, rhetorically at least, end up in Trump's cross hairs the more protracted the conflict becomes.
"For Hong Kong, especially, I think it would be very damaging," Harris said. 

"I mean, this is a city that depends on trade, so any impact on trade is going to be negative."

"No One Can Obliterate Taiwan’s Existence"

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen gave her first speech in the US in 15 years

news.com.au

IT WAS a brief fleeting speech made between flights — but it’s enraged a rising superpower.
As China builds on its attempts to wipe Taiwan from international recognition, the smaller country’s leader Tsai Ing-wen has given her first speech in the United States in 15 years.
She spoke of the importance of freedom, democracy and independence — words that fell at odds with China’s perception of Taiwan as a small part of itself.
At this stage, rising tensions between the two countries are the last thing anyone could want, with experts warning of a prospective major war looming in the region.
During a stopover en route to Paraguay, Tsai Ing-wen — whose government refuses to endorse Beijing’s view that Taiwan is part of China — vowed to defend democratic values.
“We will keep our pledge that we are willing to jointly promote regional stability and peace under the principles of national interests, freedom and democracy,” Ms Tsai said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“In going abroad, the whole world can see Taiwan; they can see our country as well as our support for democracy and freedom.”
And then, in a fleeting reference to the mainland: “We only need to be firm so that no one can obliterate Taiwan’s existence.”

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during her visit to Los Angeles, California during a stopover en route to allies Paraguay and Belize.

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH CHINA AND TAIWAN?
Neither China nor Taiwan see themselves as two separate countries.
But they do have different governments, and the trouble is each side believes itself to be the owner of both territories, in a conflict that dates back almost 100 years.
In 1927, a civil war broke out in the Republic of China between the Communist revolutionaries and the Nationalist government.
In 1949, the Nationalists were defeated and fled to Taiwan, which their forces still controlled.
At this point the fighting stopped, but the dispute wasn’t resolved; both sides continued to claim both mainland China and Taiwan belonged to them.
In 1979, the United States switched its recognition from the Taiwan government to Beijing’s. 

A number of other countries — including Australia — followed suit, and it’s understood no American leader has communicated openly with a Taiwanese president since.
Ties between Taiwan and the US have warmed further since Donald Trump came to power, and were further bolstered by the passage this week of the National Defence Authorisation Act, which includes a commitment to military support of Taiwan.
Last month, the US sent two warships into the Taiwan Strait. 

That followed a string of military drills staged by Beijing around the island.
Chinese state newspaper Global Times accused the US and Taiwan of “shady dealings”, warning that the mainland was capable of giving the Taiwanese authorities “a drastic punishment”.
Meanwhile, the US has repeatedly expressed concern about China’s increasing pressure on Taiwan.
Mr Trump has denied any change to its “One China” policy.
State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the speech did not represent any move by the Trump administration to alter the official US stance that accepts Beijing as the sole government of China, and does not officially recognise Taiwan’s government.
“The United States in regard to this trip facilitates from time to time representatives of the Taiwan authorities to transit the United States.
“Those are largely undertaken out of consideration for the safety and the comfort of those travellers, and that is in keeping with our One China policy.”
Yet previous US administrations have prevented Taiwan leaders from making speeches in the United States that would implicitly elevate their diplomatic status and irk Beijing.

TENSIONS ARE ON THE RISE
Tsai’s stopover came amid a rise in tensions between China and Taiwan that has raised concerns in Washington.
In April the Chinese military held live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait in what was widely seen as a move to intimidate Taipei.
In Singapore in June, US Secretary of Defence James Mattis warned China not to alter the security status quo in the region.

Beijing has cracked down on Taiwan’s attempts to assert itself as an autonomous independent nation.

Last month, Beijing forced several international airlines, including US carriers, to begin listing Taiwan as a part of China in advertising their services.
Dr Brendan Taylor, Associate Professor at ANU Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, argued that Taiwan was one of the most dangerous crossroads for a prospective new major war.
In his new book, The Four Flashpoints: How Asia Goes to War, he describes Taiwan as a “ticking time bomb”.
“America’s military ability to defend Taiwan is already at its limit,” he writes. 

“The US advantage will likely be gone in a decade... allowing Beijing to deny America access to this theatre.
“America’s ability to intervene in the Taiwan Strait is receding, while an attempt to re-engage carries the risk of sparking a war like no other.”

Hong Kong handover: The protest symbols China's scared of

Police have been told to crack down on protest slogans and imagery. They're hoping not to embarrass Xi Jinping while he's in Hong Kong
By James Griffiths

Protesters targeted Hong Kong's Golden Bauhinia Square, a symbol of the city's handover to Chinese rule, on Monday, June 26, 2017.

Hong Kong -- When Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997 after more than 150 years of British rule, the Bauhinia flower was chosen as the symbol of the new Chinese special administrative region.
A giant golden statue was gifted to the city by Beijing and erected at Golden Bauhinia Square, which is now used for official flag-raising ceremonies.

Early Monday, several pro-democracy activists staged their own ceremony, covering the statue in a large black cloth to expose "the brutal truth behind the glorious rhetoric" of Hong Kong's handover to China.
The protesters were led by Joshua Wong, the former "Umbrella Movement" leader turned international political activist and leader of the Demosisto political party.
"(We) wish to appeal to fellow citizens to take part in direct civic actions on 1st of July to demonstrate our aspiration to democracy and the right to self-determination," Demosisto said in a statement.

Banned words
Monday's action is the first of what is expected to be many protests around the handover anniversary, which will be heightened by the presence of Xi Jinping, who is due to arrive in the city on Thursday.
According to local media, police in the city are under instructions to shield Xi from as many of those protests as possible -- including preventing certain phrases and images banned in China or that might "embarrass" Xi from appearing in his eyeline.
So just what iconography in particular might patriotic Hong Kongers like to avoid?

Hong Kong or Taiwan independence

A protester holds a placard that reads "Hong Kong Independence" near the government's headquarters in Hong Kong on August 5, 2016, during the city's first pro-independence rally.

Since both the Umbrella Movement and government-led political reform ended in failure, there have been growing demands in the city for full independence from China. 

Few things are more likely to rile up Chinese leaders than talk of "separatism", be it in Hong Kong, Tibet or Taiwan -- a self-governing island that has been de facto independent for decades but is still claimed by Beijing.
A bizarre propaganda video published last year by Chinese legal officials warned that those advocating Hong Kong or Taiwanese independence would transform peaceful China into war ridden Syria or Iraq.

Pro-democracy protesters wave the flag of colonial Hong Kong during a march for democracy on February 1, 2015.

While most Hong Kong independence activists are critical of the UK for denying the city a chance of going it alone -- as all other British colonies were able to -- the flag of the Hong Kong Colony has nevertheless become a symbol of the movement, probably because it is guaranteed to annoy China.

Protester Xi

A carboard cutout of Xi Jinping holding a yellow umbrella seen at a protest site in Hong Kong's Admiralty district on November 12, 2014.

An image of Xi holding a yellow umbrella has been banned, according to the Ming Pao newspaper. The umbrella became a symbol of the 2014 movement after protesters used them to protect themselves against police pepper spray.

After Chinese state media published a photo of Xi carrying an umbrella on a site inspection in Wuhan province at the height of the Hong Kong demonstrations, the image was quickly remixed and adopted by the umbrella protesters.

Tiananmen Square

Pro-democracy activits march to mark the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre, on June 1, 2014 in Hong Kong.

On June 4, 1989, the People's Liberation Army sent tanks and troops into Tiananmen Square to clear pro-democracy protesters who had been occupying the site at the heart of Beijing for weeks. Hundreds were killed in the crackdown, and thousands more arrested. 

Hong Kong is the only place on Chinese soil which holds a major public commemoration of the event.
"The June 4 incident" remains one of the most censored topics in China, with all references to the massacre, no matter how oblique, banned or deleted. 

That means no social media posts around the anniversary using the words "Tiananmen," "June," "today," "student movement," "tank man," or "square," and no use of the numbers 4, 6, 8, 9 or any combination that adds up to 64 or 89, or even "May 35."

In 2013, even ducks were banned, after a giant yellow duck art installation was adopted as a way to bypass the censors.

'I want true universal suffrage'

A banner with the Chinese characters "I want true universal suffrage" placed on the windscreen of a car carrying Hong Kong leader CY Leung.

A key demand of the 2014 protests -- which were sparked after Beijing refused allow Hong Kongers to elect their own leader without China choosing the shortlist -- "I want true universal suffrage" ("ngo jiu zan pou syun" in Cantonese) has become a key rallying cry for pro-democracy activists in the city.

The slogan has been emblazoned on posters, written on walls, beamed onto the sides of buildings, and hung from Hong Kong's iconic Lion Rock mountain, which overlooks the city.

Protest songs

Protestors hold up their cellphones in a display of solidarity during a protest outside the headquarters of Legislative Council in Hong Kong on September 29, 2014.

While police may be able to prevent Xi from seeing anything that displeases him, drowning out the many Hong Kong protest songs might be a more difficult task.
"Boundless oceans, vast skies," a barnstorming ballad released in 1993 by the Hong Kong rock band Beyond has long been the unofficial anthem of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement due to its lyrics about freedom and hope written by front man Wong Ka-kui, who died in a freak accident shortly after its release.
While "Do you hear the people sing?" -- a defiant call for solidarity and resistance from the musical Les Miserables -- has been sung by protest movements around the world for years, it's popularity increased after 2014, thanks to the release of a Cantonese language cover.
As tens of thousands of Hong Kongers gathered in the streets in 2014, many felt they needed their own anthem -- rather than borrowing those of previous movements -- and several specially-written songs were released. 

"Raise the umbrella," written by Lo Hiu-pan hours after police fired tear gas at peaceful protesters, quickly became the most popular, featuring vocals from local popstars Denise Ho and Anthony Wong.

"I Am Not Chinese"

Two decades after handover, scant love for China among Hong Kong youth
By Venus Wu and Tyrone 

Kalok Leung, who was born four months after the Hong Kong's handover to Chinese rule in 1997, poses with his childhood photo which was taken at the same spot in 2002, at Golden Bauhinia Square in Hong Kong, China June 15, 2017.  

Apple Siu poses with her childhood photo around the same spot where it was taken in Hong Kong, China June 14, 2017.

Hong Kong student activist Chau Ho-oi, born in the year the Asian financial hub returned to Chinese rule 20 years ago, recalls the sense of pride she once felt toward mainland China.
Sitting with her parents when she was 11, Chau watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics on television in awe and felt "excitement in the heart" as China's athletes swept the board with 48 gold medals, more than any other nation.
"I thought China was great," Chau said. 

"If you asked me back then if I was Chinese, I'd say yes."
Fast forward nine years, however, and the former British colony's first post-handover generation is increasingly turning its back on the mainland.
"Now ... I don't want to say I am Chinese," said Chau, who was arrested during mass pro-democracy protests in 2014. 

"It gives me a very negative feeling. Even if you ask me 100 times, I would say the same thing."
According to a University of Hong Kong survey released on Tuesday that polled 120 youths, only 3.1 percent of those aged between 18 to 29 identify themselves as "broadly Chinese". 

The figure stood at 31 percent when the regular half-yearly survey started 20 years ago.
In interviews with 10 Hong Kong youths born in 1997 including Chau, all of them, including an immigrant from mainland China, told Reuters they primarily identify themselves as "Hong Kongers" and their loyalty lies with the city.
The territory became a British colony in stages in the 19th century and returned to Chinese rule under a "one country, two systems" formula which guarantees it wide-ranging autonomy, including an independent judiciary and freedom of speech, for at least 50 years.
The 20-year-olds' attitudes were hardened, they said, by a series of shadowy maneuvers suggesting a slow squeeze on those freedoms by Communist Party rulers in Beijing.
Graphic on public opinion: tmsnrt.rs/2sw6cDG

In 2012, a skinny 15-year-old student named Joshua Wong led tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents to protest against a mandatory national education curriculum they claimed would "brainwash" students by promoting Chinese patriotism. 

The curriculum was eventually shelved.
Two years later, the "Occupy" movement, with Wong at the helm, sought to pressure Beijing to allow full democracy in the election of its leader, demands that were ultimately ignored after 79 days of street protests.
The abduction of several Hong Kong booksellers by mainland agents and China's efforts to disqualify two young lawmakers who support Hong Kong independence have also shaken confidence in the "one-country, two systems" arrangement.
Student Candy Lau fears Hong Kong will become more controlled.
"You see how mass surveillance is so pervasive in China. If Hong Kong gets worse, it may become that way, and it may not become safe anymore," she said. 

"It's an invisible fear."
More and more youngsters are now pushing for the right to self-determination, and even independence, alarming Beijing.
Last month, Beijing's No. 3 official, Zhang Dejiang, who also oversees Hong Kong issues, stressed the need to "strengthen national education and legal education to Hong Kong's youth, and develop correct concepts about the country from a young age" so that they could be moulded into those who "love the country".
Hong Kong's incoming leader, Carrie Lam, speaking to China's Xinhua state news agency, said she would seek to cultivate the concept of "I am Chinese" at nursery level.
More than 120,000 Hong Kong youths will join China-related exchange programs, some sponsored by the Hong Kong government, as part of the handover's 20th anniversary celebrations, according to Xinhua.
But this patriotic push could trigger a greater backlash.
"How could the government not understand the more it forces Hong Kong people to love China, the more opposition this would draw?" asked 20-year-old Jojo Wong, no relation to Joshua.
Even more moderate students like Felix Wu, who says he's apathetic about politics, chooses to identify himself first as a Hong Konger, before his Han Chinese ethnicity.
"China is a pretty big market and Hong Kong has a need to integrate with this market," Wu said. 

"But politically they promised nothing would change for 50 years. I think they're going back on their word a bit."
Ludovic Chan, a business student hoping to join the civil service, sees himself first as a Hong Konger, but doesn't think that identity is in conflict with being Chinese.
"The two different cultures can co-exist. They shouldn't always say Hong Kong and China should integrate. But the two sides should try to understand each other more."

Two Chinas Policy

• Taiwanese see themselves as Taiwanese, not as Chinese
• Taiwanese believe that Taiwan is already an independent country called the Republic of China. 
• Taiwanese see formal independence as their ultimate goal, not simply the ability to “function with some degree of autonomy,” as Obama stated.

By Fang-Yu Chen, Wei-ting Yen, Austin Horng-en Wang and Brian Hioe

On Dec. 2, President Donald Trump startled observers when, departing from protocol, he took a phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. 

Trump has suggested that under his administration, the United States may break from the pointedly ambiguous “One China policy.”
According to that policy, the U.S. government takes no official stance on the relationship between Taiwan and China. 

In the U.S.-China Normalization Communiqué of 1978, the United States “acknowledges” that there is one China and that Taiwan is part of China. 

But the United States has never officially “recognized” Taiwan as part of China. 

This strategic ambiguity leaves the United States room for a de facto relationship with Taiwan and leaves the Taiwan-China relation an open-ended question.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) claims that Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China (ROC), is part of its territory. 

For the PRC, that’s what “One China” means. 

Trump’s call therefore alarmed China.
And so, during his final news briefing of the year, Obama reiterated the nation’s long-term commitment to the One China policy. 

He said that there is consensus on both sides of the Taiwan Strait on maintaining the “status quo,” and that “the Taiwanese have agreed that, as long as they can function with ‘some degree of autonomy,’ they won’t charge forward and declare independence.”
But is he right?
The “status quo” between Taiwan and China is often discussed as if everyone involved agreed and attitudes toward the relationship were static. 

But that’s not so.
Here’s what we find when we examine Taiwanese attitudes toward China.

1. Taiwan is de facto independent. The Taiwanese see themselves as Taiwanese, not as Chinese.
The official stance of Taiwan was that Taiwan is part of China. 

But the China that this stance refers to is the Republic of China (based in Taipei) instead of the communist People’s Republic of China (based in Beijing). (One interesting fact is that the special institution National Unification Council, which defined the official stance in 1992, was “ceased” in 2006 along with the Guidelines for National Unification.)
Since the 1970s, PRC became diplomatically acknowledged as China by most nation-states, including the United States. 

That is, ROC no longer asks to be seen as representing all of mainland China. 

Its constitution, which claims sovereignty over the whole mainland, does differentiate between the “free area,” or the island of Taiwan, and the “mainland area,” after a series of amendments that have been added since the 1990s.
But the ROC has never been part of the PRC in its history.
The majority of Taiwanese believe that Taiwan is already an independent country called the Republic of China. 

As the figure below shows, more than 70 percent of Taiwanese agree with this statement.

Source: Taiwan National Security Survey (Niou, various years)

What’s more, ROC residents increasingly identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese. 

That identity has changed significantly since the island became a democracy in the 1990s. 

In 1991, ROC and PRCrepresentatives met with one another for the first time since the 1949 civil war. 

At that point, about one-fourth of Taiwan’s residents identified themselves exclusively as “Chinese”; 17.6 percent as exclusively “Taiwanese”; and nearly half said both Chinese and Taiwanese.
But by 2014, only 3 percent still identified exclusively as Chinese — and more than 60 percent Taiwanese, hovering around there ever since. 

Today, only one-third of Taiwan’s residents think of themselves as both Chinese and Taiwanese. 

Among those who are 29 or younger, born after martial law ended in 1987, 78 percent hold an exclusively Taiwanese identity — as do nearly 70 percent of people younger than 40. 

If this trend continues, a solely Taiwanese identity will prevail as residents’ consensus.

2. However, de jure independence will only be “charged forward” when some conditions are met
For the past decades, Emerson Niou, a political scientist at Duke University, has administered a series of questionnaires to Taiwanese citizens by randomized telephone interview (conducted by the Election Study Center of the National Chengchi University). 

These surveys revealed that about three-quarters of the respondents would support Taiwanese independence if it would not cause the PRC to attack Taiwan. 

Put differently, survey evidence shows that most Taiwanese see formal independence as their ultimate goal, not simply the ability to “function with some degree of autonomy,” as Obama stated.
For Taiwanese younger than 40, pro-independence support reaches 84 percent. 

Perhaps most startling, 42.6 percent of the under-40 generation would support independence even if it meant China would attack Taiwan under the risk of war.
On the flip side, unification with China has become unpopular. 

Even under the most favorable scenario — in which there would be little political, economic or social disparities between mainland China and Taiwan — only one-third of Taiwanese citizens say they support unification. 

That’s a significant drop from the 60 percent who supported unification in 2003.
And yet the Taiwanese are not willing to pursue independence at all costs. 

Many are concerned with the economy. 

When asked to choose between formal independence or maintaining economic ties with China, 82.6 percent chose bread over romance. 

Moreover, 64.4 percent worry that China will force Taiwan to accept political concessions via economic connections. 

That has increased from less than a quarter since the two sides lifted the official trade ban in 2008, as you can see in the figure below.

3. Taiwan is a fully functioning democracy
Taiwan is a well-functioning democratic society that recently elected its first female president and has achieved its third democratic turnover of power. 

By any measure of democratization, such as the “two turnover test” or indicators measured by the Freedom House and other institutes, Taiwan is a fully consolidated democracy — the only democracy in the Chinese-speaking world. 

With a marriage equality bill moving through the legislature, Taiwan has a chance to become the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2017.
Mainland China is not. 

There, a new Overseas NGO Management Law took effect as of Jan. 1, tightening government controls over domestic civil society. 

Even international democracy activists have been targeted, as when the state forced Swedish activist Peter Dahlin to confess to crimes against China on state television.

Conclusion
The “status quo” between China and Taiwan is never static. 

How Taiwanese people perceive the relationship necessarily constrains the political position of Taiwan’s democratically elected leader. 

As a result, understanding Taiwanese perceptions is essential in navigating the delicate relationship among Taiwan, China and the United States.

Two Chinas Policy

WHAT TAIWAN’S PRESIDENT SEES IN DONALD TRUMP
By Nick Frisch

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s call to President Donald Trump, which riled both Washington and Beijing, suggests a hidden streak of boldness.

Last week, Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of Taiwan, a self-ruling island of twenty-three million people off China’s southeast coast, called President-elect Donald Trump, who by taking the call shattered a decades-long Washington taboo. 

The news thrilled millions of Taiwanese citizens, who have long complained that the United States has neglected the world’s only Chinese-speaking democracy in order to please authorities in Beijing. China, which has claimed Taiwan as an unrecovered province since Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party government fled into exile on the island, in 1949, relentlessly uses its global clout, and its United Nations Security Council veto, to keep Taiwan diplomatically invisible, and Chinese officials protest noisily against any foreign government whose actions might confer on Taiwan even a whiff of statehood. 

Fewer than two dozen countries, most of them tiny, officially recognize Taiwan. 

The United States is not among them. 

For Tsai, getting Trump on the phone was a major coup, the first known top-level contact of its kind since the severing of formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Taipei, in 1979.
On the surface, Tsai would seem an unlikely ally for Trump. 

A former World Trade Organization negotiator, she generally supports free trade and was a prominent backer of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

She favors robust American engagement along the Pacific Rim, a strong welfare state, and strict environmental protection. 

She is also temperamentally Trump’s opposite: a methodical, soft-spoken technocrat who is childless and unmarried, enjoys reading classical Chinese literature, and sometimes seems to shrink under a spotlight. 

But a land as small and vulnerable as Taiwan cannot afford to be picky about its allies—some of the smallest and most despotic regimes in the world (Swaziland’s, for instance) have received generous aid from Taiwan in exchange for diplomatic recognition and an occasional mention in speeches at the United Nations. 

By making a phone call to Trump, Tsai saw an opportunity to boost her domestic approval ratings while establishing a rapport with the next American President and, crucially, his China-skeptic advisers. 

For her, geopolitics and Taiwan’s survival come first.
Tsai, who is sixty years old, took office earlier this year, after winning a landslide vote in January. 

A former corporate attorney and law professor, she is the first woman elected to lead an Asian state without following a father, brother, or husband into politics. 

Born to a native Taiwanese family, Tsai came up through the élite institutions that were once dominated by the children of mainlander refugees, like National Taiwan University, from which she graduated in 1978. 

She continued her studies at Cornell and the London School of Economics. 

A generation earlier, a woman of Tsai’s abilities might have joined Chiang’s Nationalist Party, which groomed talented native-born Taiwanese to fill its graying senior ranks of mainlander exiles. 

Tsai, however, rose to the Presidency via the Democratic Progressive Party (D.P.P.), which began as an underground movement during the decades in which Taiwan was effectively a one-party police state, and which became Taiwan’s second political party after a contentious democratization process took place in the nineteen-eighties and nineties.
Where Nationalist Party ideology ties Taiwan’s identity to China, the D.P.P. emphasizes local Taiwanese culture and progressive civic values, like support for gay marriage. 

The D.P.P.’s party platform also calls for official de jure independence to match Taiwan’s de facto self-rule—though Tsai herself has never endorsed this proposal. 

In fact, during her run for President last year, Tsai explicitly promised to maintain the cross-Strait status quo, a delicate entente that allows trade and peace between Beijing, Washington, and Taipei.
But during her campaign Tsai also spoke to economic and cultural themes that in some way echo Trump’s, minus the rhetoric of raw bigotry. 

Both politicians distrust China’s economic policies and strategic intentions. 

On the stump last year, Tsai argued that Taiwan had become too economically exposed to mainland China, enriching a politically connected élite at the expense of working people. (In tandem with its ever-present military threat, Beijing encourages broad economic ties with Taiwan as a way to peacefully lure the island back into the fold; the mainland is now Taiwan’s biggest trading partner.)
Unfettered trade with China, Tsai argued, had hollowed out Taiwan’s domestic industries. 

Manufacturing jobs had disappeared and had not been replaced with adequate employment. 

A sclerotic and aloof government in Taipei, she charged, was protecting corporate cronies who were too close to China, while ignoring the pocketbooks and dignity of normal Taiwanese. 

Tsai pressed her candidacy with insider authority, highlighting her credentials, including her time as the head of Taiwan’s powerful Mainland Affairs Council, which manages relations with China. 

She had the expertise, she told voters, to help nudge Taiwan’s economy away from its covetous neighbor, and toward democratic allies like the United States, Japan, and India.
Tsai had run unsuccessfully on this argument once before, in 2012. 

That year, she lost decisively to the Nationalist Party candidate, Ma Ying-jeou, whose historical ties to the mainland made him Beijing’s preferred choice. 

But in 2014, as China’s economy flagged and Xi Jinping pressed a harsh crackdown on civil liberties, Taiwanese anxieties boiled over into protests that immobilized the parliament in Taipei. 

The unrest put the brakes on a trade bill that, critics charged, went too far in opening sensitive local industries, like the media, to mainland-Chinese investment. 

This year, a cresting wave of economic angst, and distrust of Beijing’s strategic intentions, brought Tsai to power and gave the D.P.P. its first-ever parliamentary majority. 

But, with Beijing hostile and Washington skeptical, she faced a tricky path forward.
Communist Party leaders in Beijing openly despise Tsai and the D.P.P. 

After her election, Chinese state media called Taiwanese independence a “hallucination,” and predicted that the rule of the D.P.P. would be “as fleeting as a cloud.” 

A columnist for Xinhua, Beijing’s official news agency, later warned that Tsai, who is unmarried, “does not currently have the pull of love, or know the burdens of family or the care of children, which makes her style and policies too emotional, too individual, and too extreme.” 

Chinese authorities fear that Tsai, despite her public moderation, intends to covertly consolidate Taiwan’s separateness from China, steering Taiwan toward independence and awaiting a geopolitical opening to stand in the world as a zhengchang guojia—a normal country.
Beijing’s leaders see Taiwan as crucial to their own legitimacy. 

The necessity and inevitability of eventual reunification with Taiwan has been inculcated in all mainland Chinese through decades of propaganda; it is written into China’s constitution, and a 2005 “anti-secession” law mandates invasion if Taiwan formally secedes. 

Yet today reunification seems further away than ever. 

Taiwan’s population is a blend of mainlander exiles from 1949, Hokkien and Hakka Chinese who arrived as maritime migrants generations ago, Austronesian aboriginals, descendants of Japanese and European colonists, and economic migrants from Southeast Asia. 

Together, they overwhelmingly identify as “Taiwanese” rather than “Chinese.” 

Beijing’s standing offer to Taiwan—reunification under the “one country, two systems” approach used to regain the colony of Hong Kong from London—has little appeal to Taiwan’s people, who see rising repression in the former British territory despite China’s promises of local autonomy.
Trump’s election, and his breezy bulldozing of political norms, gave Tsai an opening that she never would have had with Hillary Clinton, and an opportunity to deliver on her campaign pledge to uphold Taiwanese dignity on the international stage. 

According to the Washington Post, her call to Trump was planned weeks in advance and was brokered between Tsai’s aides and a circle of American experts who see Taiwan as a natural ally of the United States. 

In the wake of the call, Tsai’s aides publicly feigned bewilderment at the international uproar it had caused. 

But Tsai knew full well that the call would rile both Beijing and Washington’s foreign-policy professionals. 

That she made it anyway suggests a hidden streak of boldness that her most fervent supporters have hoped for, and that Beijing has long feared.