We Should Take Inciting and Manipulating Wishful Thinking in Hong Kong as a Warning

We Should Take Inciting and Manipulating Wishful Thinking in Hong Kong as a Warning

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

July 9, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

The "National Security for Hong Kong Act", implemented for a week, has initially achieved the expected results. The principal figures have one after another expressed their stances, clarifying their advocacies or withdrawing from their organizations. The advocacies for violence and Hong Kong independence are expected to disappear temporarily.

We can certainly criticize and oppose the "National Security for Hong Kong Act", but doesn’t Taiwan also have "five national security laws"? The DPP government has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the national security protective net, thus placing many restrictions on people’s freedoms and rights as well as related acts. Especially, the “Anti-Infiltration Act” is even more stringent, making people’s exchanges with the Mainland encounter criminal charges with every slight move. The definition is vague regarding criminal acts in the law, leaving too much leeway for a judge’s personal convictions in handing down a sentence, which has great chilling and deterrent effects. Isn't the legislative process also a backroom operation, ignoring dissent, and railroading its passage with numerical superiority? The content of this law and its legislative process are in fact quite similar to the actions of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China; thus, ridiculing others would probably reflect that we are not much better, either.

Some political parties and activists in the Green camp sing loudly anti-China and counter China tunes, seeking only exhibitions of bravado, not caring about reality, nor caring about the consequences. They jettison the wisdom required when "a small state serves a bigger one", even believing that there is a security guarantee with the backup of the big brother of the USA, allowing them to fear nothing. People with such delusions and wishful thinking should open their eyes and look at Hong Kong’s end result, using Hong Kong as a mirror to understand that inciting and manipulating the issue is impractical, and international inciting and manipulating of the issue is even more undesirable.

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