The Growing Hong Kong-Taiwan Axis

By TED GALEN CARPENTER 

Hong Kong’s most visible pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong joins Taiwan’s New Power Party chairman Huang Kuo-chang, Taiwan’s “Sunflower Movement” leaders Li Fei-fan and Chen Wei-ting chant slogans to demand the Chinese government release detained Taiwanese rights activist Lee Ming-cheh in Taipei.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrations appear to be having a major impact on Taiwan’s presidential campaign in advance of its January 2020 election.
Protest leaders urge the Taiwanese to express emphatic vocal support for Hong Kong’s democratic aspirations. 

To a large extent, that is already happening. 

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, frequently speaks out in favor of the Hong Kong demonstrators and their demands, infuriating Beijing. 

Protests in Hong Kong have made the Taiwanese “increasingly treasure” their democracy and “deeply feel” what it would be like if China treated them the way it’s handling Hong Kong, Tsai said in June.
The emergence of a de facto Hong Kong-Taiwan democratic political axis has heightened Beijing’s nervousness and paranoia. 

Not only do Communist Party leaders have to deal with the rising popular defiance in Hong Kong to Beijing’s authority, but the prospect of any negotiations for Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland now looks utterly remote. 

Xi Jinping’s government is not likely to tolerate high-profile policy defeats on two fronts, yet that outcome is a growing possibility. 

The situation has become a ticking time bomb.
Joshua Wong, a prominent figure in Hong Kong’s street protests, is stepping up his efforts to enlist the Taiwanese. 

“We hope that before Communist China’s National Day on Oct. 1, our friends in Taiwan can express their support for Hong Kong through street protests,” Wong said at a news conference on September 3. 

“A lot of people in the past have said ‘today Hong Kong and tomorrow Taiwan.’ But I think the most ideal thing we’d say is ‘Taiwan today, tomorrow Hong Kong.’ Hong Kong can be like Taiwan, a place for freedom and democracy.”
Such sentiments by themselves are enough to enrage Beijing. 

But Wong also urged Taiwan’s government to let Hong Kong protesters seek political asylum. 

Worse from Beijing’s standpoint, he made those statements not in Hong Kong or some neutral location, but in Taipei following meetings with Taiwan’s governing, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). 

Communist Chinese leaders are likely to interpret such a venue as further evidence of a Hong Kong-Taiwanese political alliance against the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Beijing’s persistent attempts to undermine Hong Kong’s political autonomy under its “one county, two systems” arrangement has caused Taiwanese attitudes to turn emphatically against such a formula for their island. 

Most Taiwanese were never enthusiastic about that proposal, but the proposed Hong Kong extradition law (just now withdrawn) that would have enabled Chinese authorities to try Hong Kong-based political dissidents in mainland courts has soured Taiwanese public opinion even more. 

A poll that Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council published in late July found that 88.7 percent of respondents rejected one country, two systems, up from 75.4 per cent in a January survey.
The Hong Kong democracy campaign is strengthening hardline, anti-PRC factions in Taiwan. Incumbent President Tsai appeared to be in deep political trouble earlier this year. 

Taiwan’s continuing economic malaise had undermined her presidency, and the DPP suffered huge losses in November 2018 local elections. 

Indeed, the losses were so severe that Tsai had to quit her post as party chair. 

She also faced a strong primary challenge for the DPP’s presidential nomination from her onetime prime minister, James Lai.
But Tsai has shrewdly exploited public anger at Beijing’s crude attempts to undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy to rebuild her domestic political support. 

“As long as I am here, I will stand firm to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty,” Tsai pledged in July. “As long as I am here, you would not have to fear, because we will not become another Hong Kong.” 

That message resonated with voters, and not only did she defeat Lai, but her fortunes against the opposition Kuomintang Party in the upcoming general election appear far more favorable than they did a few months ago.
The Hong Kong developments have created a political nightmare for the Kuomintang. 

The party’s nominee, Han Kuo-yu, the maverick populist mayor of Kaohsiung, had long advocated closer relations with the mainland. 

To that end, he sought to resume the policy that the last Kuomintang president, Ma Jing-jeou, pursued from 2008 to 2016. 

Earlier this year, Han visited China and had cordial meetings with Communist Party officials. 

He has always seemed highly favorable to the PRC’s one country, two systems arrangement for Taiwan as well as Hong Kong. 

Both the Chinese government and pro-Beijing media outlets in Taiwan (the so-called red media) were decidedly enthusiastic about Han’s candidacy against more moderate opponents in the Kuomintang Party’s primary election this summer.
But the popularity of the Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrations among Taiwanese voters has thrown Han on the defensive, and he is beating a very fast retreat from his previous position. 

In a desperate attempt to rebut allegations that he would embrace an appeasement policy toward Beijing, Han even asserted that, if he is elected president, Taiwan would only accept China’s one country, two systems proposal “over my dead body.” 

It is not clear how credible his eleventh-hour political transformation is with Taiwanese voters.
A Tsai victory is now a serious possibility, even though such an outcome would infuriate the Chinese government and lead to a spike in Taiwan Strait tensions. 

Her re-election might well lead China to conclude that achieving Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland by peaceful means is no longer feasible.
The DPP’s landslide victory in 2016 came as a shock to Beijing. 

PRC leaders had counted on growing cross-strait economic ties to gradually erode the Taiwanese public’s resistance to political reunification. 

It seemed a logical approach under Tsai’s accommodating Kuomintang predecessor, but the DPP’s electoral triumph underscored its defects. 

Beijing reacted harshly, with a surge of provocative military exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait, strident denunciations of Taipei’s leaders and their policies, and a revived campaign to poach Taiwan’s handful of remaining diplomatic partners. 

That campaign has accelerated dramatically in recent weeks. 

Beijing has enticed both the Solomon Islands and Kiribati to sever diplomatic relations with Taipei.
The United States already is entangled in the dispute over Taiwan’s political status. 

Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, Washington made a commitment to provide Taipei with “defensive” weaponry and to regard any coercive moves by Beijing as a threat to the peace of East Asia. 

Under the Trump administration, U.S. policy has become even more supportive of Taiwan’s de facto independence. 

American officials complained about the decision of the Solomon Islands to recognize Beijing instead of Taipei and threatened to reconsider aid to that country.
Even more significant, for the first time since Washington severed formal diplomatic ties with Taipei and switched them to Beijing in 1979, high-level U.S. security officials, including former national security adviser John Bolton, have met with their Taiwanese counterparts. 

The Trump administration has also approved an $8 billion arms sale that includes F-16 fighters.
Chinese leaders suspect that the United States is fomenting much of the trouble in Hong Kong. 

Such accusations are nothing more than typical propaganda and scapegoating on the part of a beleaguered communist regime. 

The sight of more and more demonstrators waving American flags understandably makes Beijing suspicious and nervous. 

Moreover, there have been statements of support for the protests from congressional leaders and Democratic presidential candidates, and meetings between Hong Kong opposition figures and administration officials. 

One such meeting with a diplomat in the United States Consulate in Hong Kong has been seized on by China, as was another in Washington with Vice President Mike Pence and President Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton.”
Chinese now face the prospect of twin humiliating political defeats.

One only hopes that they do not adopt reckless policies towards either Hong Kong or Taiwan. 

A Tiananmen Square-style crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators would poison Beijing’s relations with the United States and China’s other trading partners, and (at a minimum) force them to impose economic sanctions. 

Any Chinese military move against Taiwan would be even worse, creating an immediate, potentially lethal, crisis between Beijing and Washington. 

The next few months, perhaps even the next few weeks, may determine whether East Asia remains at peace.

Donald Trump is a moron

Trump called for Guo Wengui’s deportation after casino owner Steve Wynn brought letter from Beijing government
By Julian Borger in Washington

Billionaire Guo Wengui, whom Chinese security agents have tried to restrain from publishing accusatory tweets against the Beijing government. 

Donald Trump called for the deportation of a Chinese dissident living in the US, after receiving a request from Beijing hand-delivered by a casino owner with business interests in China, according to a US report.
The Wall Street Journal described a Chinese government attempt to put pressure on Guo Wengui, a real estate tycoon living in exile in New York, to halt his allegations of corruption in high places in China.

Guo Wengui tweeted this picture of himself with former senior Trump aide Steve Bannon.

A group of officials from China’s ministry of state security, who entered the US on visas that did not allow them to conduct official business, visited Guo in his New York apartment in May, and used veiled threats in an attempt to persuade Guo to stop his accusatory tweets, which have a wide following in China, and return home. 

Guo shrugged off the pressure and made a recording of his conversation with the officials, part of which he posted online.
After that visit, FBI agents confronted the Chinese officials at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. 

The Chinese visitors first claimed to be cultural diplomats and then admitted they were security officials. 

The agents warned them they were violating the terms of their visa and told them to leave the country.
However, two days later, just before leaving the country, the Chinese officials paid a second visit to Guo, triggering a debate within the administration over whether they should be arrested. 

FBI agents were posted at John F Kennedy airport ready to carry out the arrests before the officials boarded their flight, but they were not made, after the state department argued it could trigger a diplomatic crisis.
Guo has filed an application for political asylum in the US, which is pending. 

But according to the Journal’s account, Trump called for Guo’s deportation in a discussion on policy towards China, describing him as a “criminal” at an Oval Office policy meeting in June, on the basis of a letter from Beijing accusing him of serious crimes.
The report said the letter had been hand-delivered to him at a private dinner by Steve Wynn, a Las Vegas casino magnate and Republican National Committee finance chairman with interests in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau, for which Wynn relies on Beijing for licensing.
The marketing director for Wynn Resorts Ltd, Michael Weaver, told the Journal in a written statement: “[T]hat report regarding Mr Wynn is false. Beyond that, he doesn’t have any comment.”
Weaver did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian on what part of the story was false and whether Wynn had ever delivered a letter from the Chinese government to Trump.
The Journal report said that aides tried to persuade Trump out of going ahead with Guo’s deportation, noting he was a member of the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. 

The aides later ensured that the deportation would not go ahead.
There was no immediate response from the White House or the state department to a request to comment on the report. 

A state department representative told the Journal: “Decisions on these kinds of matters are based on interagency consensus.”
A justice department representative said: “It is a criminal offense for an individual, other than a diplomatic or consular officer or attache, to act in the United States as an agent of a foreign power without prior notification to the attorney general.”

Exiled Chinese billionaire blasts kleptocracy running China, warns of spy infiltration in US

• China is being controlled by a small clique of crooked high-level officials.
• Chinese security officials earlier this year authorized an escalation of espionage efforts in the United States.
• Guo's earlier scheduled appearance at a Washington think tank was postponed due to heavy pressure by China.

By Dan Mangan

Billionaire businessman Guo Wengui speaks during an interview in New York City, April 30, 2017.
A Chinese billionaire in self-imposed exile blasted on Thursday a small clique of corrupt "kleptocrats" running China — as he also warned of a wave of Chinese spies being dispatched to the United States in recent months.
"What they're doing is against humanity," said Guo Wengui, during an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, two days after a previously scheduled appearance at a think tank in the same city was postponed due to heavy pressure from the Chinese government.
"What the U.S. ought to do is take action, instead of just talking to the Chinese kleptocracy," Guo said through a translator.
"They are just a tiny group of Mafia, pure and simple," said Guo, a real-estate magnate also known as Miles Kwok, who lives in a $68 million apartment in New York City.
"I would like all the members of the Chinese Communist Party to wake up and say no to this ruling clique."
Guo said he was aware of multiple initiatives by that clique in China to increase the number of spies in the U.S. and "to weaken the United States, to bring about turmoil in the United States and to ... decimate the United States."
"These plans pose great threats to the American people and their property," Guo said.
Those efforts are "100 times, or even 1,000 times" as potentially damaging as the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Guo's appearance in Washington was just the latest in a recent flurry of controversies surrounding the real estate magnate, who fled to the United States in 2015 after learning a security official he had ties with was being targeted by an anticorruption campaign.
Guo has unloaded a barrage of allegations of corruption by people in the highest levels of China's ruling Communist Party, which include claims that the party's own head of anticorruption activities, Wang Qishan, has unclean hands. 

Wang's family secretly controls one of the largest conglomerates in China, the New York Times has reported.
In September, Guo applied for political asylum in the U.S. 

But he has kept on making scathing and salacious attacks on social media against his targets.
Last Saturday, Facebook reportedly blocked a profile with Guo's name and removed another page linked to him. 

Facebook said it took that action after confirming the pages included another person's identifiable personal information, in violation of the platform's terms of service.
Guo's targets haven't taken his claims lying down.
In April, the Voice of America, which is operated by the U.S. government, abruptly cut short an interview with Guo, and later put five of its own journalists on administrative leave in connection with the interview. 

The chief of VOA's Mandarin service told CNBC that Chinese authorities met with VOA's Beijing correspondent and asked that the interview with Guo be canceled.
Earlier this year, the Chinese government asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for Guo.

The Associated Press has reported that Chinese prosecutors are investigating Guo "for at least 19 major criminal cases," which included allegedly bribing intelligence officials, kidnapping, fraud and money laundering. 

In August, AP revealed that Chinese authorities have asked for another Interpol warrant for Guo, on a claim that he "raped" a 28-year-old former personal assistant.
This week representatives of a pro-China corporate investigative firm provided CNBC with a 12-page dossier on Guo detailing his use of social media to make "allegations against women and his perceived enemies," and the fact that he "has been subject to accusations of questionable business dealings and the defrauding of business partners."
The dossier from the firm, which has been retained by a number of clients around the world that have been targets of Guo, also noted "a series of defamation suits" filed in New York City against the billionaire since April.
The suits were filed by Caixin Media; Soho China, a real estate company; an affiliate of the major Chinese conglomerate HNA Group, and China's vice minister of housing and urban rural development.
Guo told The Wall Street Journal for a story published Tuesday that he has set up a $150 million legal war chest to fight the lawsuits.
"Nothing can stop me," Guo told the Journal.
But Guo was stopped hours later Tuesday by the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington.
The Hudson Institute told Guo around noon that day that it was postponing his planned appearance there on Wednesday, the Journal reported. 

Guo told the paper that the think tank told him his appearance was "poorly timed." 

CNBC has reached out for comment from the Hudson Institute.
So instead, Guo spoke to reporters Thursday at the National Press Club.
"You have caused quite a stir, not only in the United States but also in China," said Bill Gertz, senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon, who moderated the event.
Guo told reporters that he was jailed in China for 22 months after the government's 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square, whose efforts he supported with donations.
At around the same time, Guo said, "due to some kind of a trade dispute" that his brother became involved with, police shot and killed his younger brother, as his brother tried to shield Guo's wife from their bullets.
"The crime they gave me was so-called anti-revolutionary, and then they change it to obstruction of justice and fraud. They said I engaged in fraud and stole somebody's money," Guo said.
Years before, during the Cultural Revolution, Guo said his father was beaten badly after being sent into internal exile, "my brothers were injured physically ... and my mother had a nervous breakdown."
After his own release from jail, Guo returned to business, and began building luxury hotels, he said.
"From then on, I set myself a goal, which I had in my heart, that was to engage in revenge, not only for myself but for the whole of the Chinese people," Guo said. 

"For the injustices and the injuries and the deaths they have rendered to my younger brother, to my family members, to my brothers, and to my cousins, and to promote and bring about justice and equality to the whole country by overthrowing the existing system."
He said that after making $17 billion, his goal was "to engage in some kind of revolutionary activities."
That $17 billion, he said, is now "all frozen by the Chinese government."
"Since I came abroad, I have also made a lot of money," Guo said. 

"I have the best house, private aircraft, yacht, so as far as my personal welfare and personal needs are concerned, I have no other needs that I really desire."
"My only single goal is to change China," he said.

Billionaire Who Accused Top Chinese Officials of Corruption Asks U.S. for Asylum

By MICHAEL FORSYTHE

Guo Wengui, a billionaire property developer, is seeking asylum in the United States because his public charges against Chinese officials have made him “a political opponent of the Chinese regime,” his lawyer said. 

A billionaire property developer who has accused some of China’s most powerful officials of corruption has applied for political asylum in the United States, his lawyer said.
The billionaire, Guo Wengui, who is in the United States on a tourist visa that expires later this year, is seeking asylum status because his public charges against Chinese officials have made him “a political opponent of the Chinese regime,” Thomas Ragland, a Washington-based lawyer representing him, said in a telephone interview late Wednesday.
Asylum – even a pending asylum application — would give Mr. Guo more protection because he could stay in the United States while the application was being considered, a process that can take years, Mr. Ragland said.
“Asylum offers a level of protection that is different from having a visa status,” Mr. Ragland said. “Visas can be canceled or revoked.”
From his $68 million apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan, Mr. Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, has used Twitter and YouTube to publicize his claims that Wang Qishan, a member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee who oversees the ruling Communist Party’s own anticorruption efforts, and his family members secretly control one of China’s largest conglomerates.

His accusations made against the family of Wang’s immediate predecessor can be corroborated.

Wang Qishan, a member of China’s elite Politburo Standing Committee whose retirement status will be decided at a Communist Party meeting next month. Wang and his family secretly control one of China’s largest conglomerates.

Mr. Guo’s actions have earned the ire of the Chinese government. 

In April Beijing asked Interpol, the global police organization, to issue a global warrant for his arrest. He is also being sued for libel in United States courts by several Chinese individuals and companies.
The asylum application could present a diplomatic quandary for the Trump administration, which is seeking China’s help in isolating North Korea after it conducted a series of missile tests and underground nuclear tests. 

Mr. Guo is arguably China’s most-wanted man, and giving him asylum would almost certainly antagonize Beijing, which may interpret the move as tacit approval of Mr. Guo’s tactics to undermine China’s leadership.
Articles in China’s closely controlled news media have accused Mr. Guo of crimes including fraud, money laundering and rape. 

In April one of his associates, a former vice minister of state security, appeared in a televised confession in which he said Mr. Guo had bribed him.
Mr. Guo’s asylum application may be complicated by his claims that he has passports from many countries, including the United Arab Emirates, and is no longer a citizen of China. 

It is unclear why Mr. Guo could not go to another country where he has citizenship when his United States visa expires, though Mr. Ragland said that the United States might be the only country where Mr. Guo feels safe from the long arm of the Chinese state.
Mr. Guo’s asylum application, which Mr. Ragland said was received Wednesday by a government processing center in Vermont, comes ahead of an important Communist Party meeting next month that will determine whether Wang, who is past the customary retirement age, will be able to remain on the Politburo Standing Committee.
Mr. Guo’s accusations were seen by some analysts as weakening Wang’s position. 

But on Wednesday, Beijing sent a signal that Wang still enjoyed strong backing from his peers. 

Three of his fellow members of the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee, plus the top aide to Xi Jinping, attended a ceremony in Beijing with Wang to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of his father-in-law, a senior leader who died in 1994.

Chinese whistleblower granted political asylum

A former state media worker who fled China last year has been granted political asylum in Australia.
By Joel Keep

Jun Mei Wu at the Ashfield Uniting Church in 2016.

'Rebecca' Jun Mei Wu has told SBS News she is relieved to have been granted asylum in Australia.
Ms Wu worked for the digital arm of the People’s Daily state media empire from 2012 to 2016. 

She fled the city of Wuhan for Sydney after being detained and questioned by security officers over her affiliation with an underground Protestant church.
“I’m very thankful to the Australian government for saving me from certain imprisonment in China,” Ms Wu told SBS.
“My relatives are still under surveillance back home. The situation journalists face in China is dire.”
In a series of interviews with SBS last year, Ms Wu described the personal crisis she underwent when she was confronted by the systemic repression and censorship involved in the state media which is controlled by the Communist Party.
“I left because I didn’t want to work in party propaganda anymore,” Ms Wu said.
“Telling the truth was not how we did business.”
Her husband remains in China, where authorities have placed him under a domestic travel restriction, which prevents him from leaving the city in which he works.
Ms Wu’s flight from China provided a rare insight into the workings of state media there, which has seen an increase in censorship directives and online surveillance under Xi Jinping's watch.
The former Communist Party member also documented several cases of extortion involving the People’s Daily, in which reporters were told to find evidence of corruption before blackmailing companies.
“It was cash for silence, basically,” she told SBS.
In one instance, she alleged that the Daily’s Wuhan bureau extorted more than 627,000 RMB every year from chemical manufacturer Chuyuan Technologies, which had done massive ecological damage to nearby villages after dumping effluent in the Yangtze River.
“This was our arrangement: Chuyuan would pay us $119,000 per year, and we would hold off on reporting any of these things that were affecting local people,” she explained.
“In addition to that, Chuyuan would get advertising space – as well as good press in our reportage.”
Ms Wu was detained by public security officials last year after managers discovered psalm notes at her workplace.
After intense questioning, she was asked to “infiltrate and monitor” her church group and to pass the information to security forces.
Her detention came at the height of a state crackdown on underground churches in China, in which a prominent pastor Father Gu Yuese was detained by authorities alongside his lawyer.
Reverend Bill Crews of the Uniting Church in Ashfield, who gave Ms Wu sanctuary upon her arrival to Australia, praised the Immigration Minister for his decision to grant asylum.
“I am so pleased by this decision,” Reverand Crews said.
“The immigration department and the minister have acted commendably.”

Australia's Finlandization: Chinese spies in Australia on the rise

• Chen Yonglin sought political asylum in Australia after resigning his diplomat role
• Warned more that 1,000 Chinese spies in Australia
• Says Chinese community representatives work for Chinese Government

By Andrew Greene

Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin speaks during an address to the University of Melbourne's History Department forum on the nature of political asylum in Australia August 5, 2005 in Melbourne, Australia. Mr Chen defected from China claiming political asylum, and he and his family have since been granted permanent protection visas to stay in Australia. Mr Chen said there are up to 1,000 Chinese spies and operatives in Australia with some being engaged in kidnappings.

Chen Yonglin, the Chinese diplomat who quit his job more than a decade ago, has broken a lengthy silence to warn of a growing number of spies and agents working for Beijing in Australia.

In 2005, Mr Chen caused global headlines when he claimed China was operating a network of "over 1,000 Chinese secret agents and informants in Australia".
The former diplomat, who now works as a businessman, has warned the number of secretive Chinese operatives has steadily grown since he stopped working for China's foreign service.
"There should be some increase after over 10 years because China is now the wealthiest government in the world, they should have money, they should be [able] to afford raise a huge number of spies here," he told ABC News.
He stressed the increase was mainly in casual informants who provided crucial pieces of intelligence to Beijing.
Since successfully seeking political asylum in Australia, Mr Chen said he had become growingly concerned about Beijing's influence in his new home.
He believes that of particular concern is last year's decision to approve a 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin to Chinese-owned company Landbridge.
"I think it's very stupid. It's common sense that Darwin Port is strategically important and against the northern invasion," he said.
Mr Chen has also hit out at activists who have recently taken to the streets to show support for China's military expansion in the South China Sea.
"A majority of Chinese community representatives work for the Chinese Government," he said.