The rule of law …
On 1st April this year the first protest march against the Hong Kong extradition law was held in Wan Chai. Ten years ago on that same day, 1st April, the London Metropolitan police murdered Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor, at the G20 protest in London. They killed him on film, in front of thousands of citizens, by pushing him onto his face from behind and beating him with a baton. They then refused to help him, denied that they had done it, and refused to accept any responsibility until the film of the event was released. The day after his death the police attacked peaceful protestors at a candelight vigil to remember him, also on film. They lied about his death for days and found a corrupt coroner to do an autopsy, in a scandalous miscarriage of justice that took a year to be undone. Finally, after a second autopsy and an inquiry the police officer who killed him, PC Harwood, was found not guilty of manslaughter, and eventually dismissed from the police force. He was never convicted of any crime, and neither were the police who assaulted mourners at the vigil for Tomlinson. For weeks after the event the police and their friends in media organizations like the Sun, Daily Mail and the Telegraph maintained that demonstrators had prevented ambulance officers from reaching Tomlinson, when in fact the police had refused to provide first aid and the only help Tomlinson received was from protestors.
At the G20 protest in London – which lasted for 4 days – the police used aggressive “kettling” procedures, police dogs and horse charges. A total of 180 protestors were injured. While PC Harwood and the police who assaulted the mourners were never convicted of any crime, one demonstrator was sentenced to two years in prison for throwing a chair through a bank window.
Today in Wan Chai the protests against the Hong Kong extradition law continue, as they have done almost continuously since the events began on 1st April. During this four months no one has been killed, although the police have fired rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray at the protestors. Police in London 10 years ago also used batons and pepper spray, along with horses and kettling tactics. What have the Hong Kong protestors done, and how does it compare with the G20 protest?
- They sprayed the Chinese for “chink” (支那) on the walls of the Beijing Liaison office, knowing full well that in mainland China this is a vicious racial slur
- They broke into the legislative building and trashed it
- They have repeatedly torn down the Chinese flag and replaced it with the former Hong Kong colonial flag, a reminder of a time when China was humiliated by a foreign power
- They graffitied the graves of important historical figures in Hong Kong history with racial slurs
- They attacked mainland Chinese people and chanted “go back” at them
- They occupied the airport and railway stations, disrupting major transport hubs and interfering with the business of ordinary Hong Kong people, and deliberately disrupting the business of mainland traders near the border
- They forced mainlanders to hand over their phones to demonstrators to prove they weren’t filming them
How many of those things did the G20 protestors do? And how many of those things did you see reported in the western press? I’ll wager you saw none of it, but if you read today’s feed on the Guardian about the demonstrations you will see all manner of cute little tidbits about all the peaceful and happy things the demonstrators are doing, told with a breathless tone as if it’s just a day out in the park and the first time the reporters have ever seen a demonstration. Breathless reports about how the demonstrators are cheered by passing citizens and told to “add oil”, reports of them using cute codewords to alert teams to raise umbrellas, pictures of decorated barriers, uncritical reporting of rival demonstrators as “triads”, reports from the airport of protest banners saying they can handle tear gas, talking about flash mob tactics with an approving tone and cute exclamation marks … it could almost be a picnic!
You didn’t see any of that style of reporting back in the G20 protests in London. There was no breathless tone of approval, no reports on the cute things that everyone does at demonstrations to defuse tension, pass the time or relieve boredom. Western reports did not describe protest tactics with approval at how smart and organized they were, or talk about which passersby approved (they only reported disapproval). When protesters at the G20 wore masks to hide themselves from police cameras or pepper spray they were described as thugs or maligned as “black bloc”, not seen as innocent young people taking necessary measures to defend themselves from police violence. In the Hong Kong riots police attack protesters; in the G20 London protest “violence broke out”, the passive voice used to ensure the police did not take the blame. There were no lasers used by demonstrators at the London protest, but rioters in Hong Kong have fired lasers at police “to obscure their identity”, and the media have not reported this as if it might carry some risk of blindness for police. For weeks they have reported about demonstrators helping old men across the road, about their kindness to strangers, about the organized way they care for their town and each other. There was even some ridiculous footage of them cleaning up their rubbish. You didn’t see any of that at the G20 London Protest, even though it all happened (these things always happen at protests).
The underlying demands of the protest are also reported differently. The G20 protestors’ concrete demands for change – for a fairer distribution of the wealth that global elites have been stealing from ordinary people, for greater equity, for environmental action and action on global warming – were ignored, and the whole movement made out to be a seething mass of discontented socialists. In the Hong Kong riot the protests are always reported as being about the extradition law, even though their actions – the “Hong Kongers!” chants, the “go back” chants, the racial slurs, the equivalent of Pride Boys moving in the mass[1], the tearing down of the Chinese flag, the calls for independence – make it clear that a large part of this movement is not about that at all, but a demand for independence from China. They also completely misrepresent the law itself, presenting it as a law to extradite people to China when it is not that at all, and conflate it with things completely unconnected to the law (like the bookseller issue). There is also a constant breathless expectation that the police will turn more violent or the army will be sent in, even after four months of restraint and patience on behalf of the Hong Kong government that would never have been seen in the UK.
If the G20 protests had lasted 4 months, shutting down Heathrow Airport and the Tube and involving vicious attacks on European bank workers on the streets week in and week out, would the Metropolitan police have been so restrained? Considering that they murdered an unconnected civilian on the first day, and covered it up? No, I don’t think they would have. And rather than having the main media organizations wondering daily whether the police would escalate, by the time a month had passed outlets like the Times and the Daily Mail would be begging them to. Western media coverage of the G20 protest in London was shameful, and their pathetic acquiescence to the lies the police told about the murder of Ian Tomlinson was a deep stain on their profession. Now we have to watch them uncritically refusing to report anything bad about the Hong Kong demonstrations, and reporting them as if they were a fun family picnic for the simple reason that their government doesn’t like the Chinese government – and for reasons of good old fashioned racism, of course. Today, for example, the Hong Kong chief of AFP tweeted a claim that the Opium War was good for China, and doubled down on it when challenged. These people are responsible for reporting to you about what is happening in Hong Kong, and they don’t care about any truth or any balance at all.
Underneath all of this unrest in Hong Kong is another tragedy. The extradition law was brought to parliament after a 20 year stay because a Hong Kong national murdered his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan and fled the country, and because there is no extradition treaty with Taiwan he cannot be sent back to face justice. The story of that murdered girl and her family’s need for justice has been buried in the hyperbole about freedom and the rule of law, just as 10 years ago the truth of Ian Tomlinson’s murder was buried by a complicit, lickspittle press under an avalanche of lies and obfuscations. It is looking likely that the murderer of that Taiwanese woman will get away with his crime, just as PC Harwood suffered no legal consequences for murdering Ian Tomlinson. And in both cases the press will look the other way, forget the ordinary people that mattered, and offer up lies and calumny in the service of the national interest. They shamed themselves then and they shame themselves now.
fn1: It’s pretty well established that the 2014 umbrella movement had a nasty racist component, probably led by a movement called Civic Passion that is also present in the current demonstrations, and seems to be a little bit like a Pride Boys movement for Hong Kongers.
Compromise and Conceit 
August 5, 2019 at 11:41 pm
I think you’ve been drinking too much Chinese tea, my friend.
I was at the HK airport during the sit in. It was impressive, but peaceful and organized. There’a a video going around that the Chinese media likes to show of one old man getting verbally harassed by a few young protesters. Conveniently we don’t really see what happened to get those people so riled up. That was really the only incident of note in a 10-hour protest.
You forgot to mention the violence at Yuen Long. I hope that’s not what you were referring to when you talked about rival protesters, because those white-shirt men were thugs with big sticks hitting people indiscriminately.
I don’t think the main goal is independence. I think the mainland wants us to think that HK people are making it about that – I received a massive response on instagram from Chinese insta-bots on my post about the airport sit-in.
The main goals are clear: complete withdrawal of the bill, retraction of “riot” characterization of June 12 protest, release of arrested protesters, formation of independent commission of inquiry.
Are there people who are deviating to settle personal old scores? For sure. There’s a million people out on the streets every weekend, there’s bound to be. Do you think this happens in most protests anywhere in the world? You decide.
And don’t try to tip-toe around the “bookseller issue.” We are talking about 5 people who sold books that went against the wishes of the Party and were mysteriously disappeared. It’s a big deal.
August 6, 2019 at 12:10 am
I’m sure the HK airport demonstration was peaceful and organized. I’m also sure that if it happened in Heathrow it would not be presented as peaceful and organized, just a bunch of radicals destroying property. My point here is not about whether the demonstration is deserved or not, but about the difference in representation of protestors between London and Hong Kong, by the same media organizations. There is video on the Guardian live feed of demonstrators with a huge slingshot firing bricks at the police. I was in London in 2009 and I can assure you that the same footage would not have been presented as a neutral act of self-defence back then. Even injuring horses in a horse charge was seen as a despicable act of cowardly terror back in 2009, but sure, I believe the media is suddenly being impartial and balanced when they show masked demonstrators in Hong Kong building trebuchets to attack police, and don’t comment critically.
I think it’s disingenuous to pretend these demonstrations are not about independence. Besides the chants, the raising of the colonial flag, the tearing down of the Chinese flag, writing “chink” on walls and defacing territorial emblems – that part of these demonstrations is why they’re getting so much nice traction in the British press, and is also simultaneously they part they’re downplaying. That I’m sure has nothing to do with the ongoing British post-colonial humiliation! Just balanced reporting!
(The “triad” reference was not to Yuen Long, but to a report today of a few aggressive guys in white shirts who were immediately labeled triads without any critical investigation – just as the media in 2009 uncritically repeated everything the police told them, despite repeatedly being shown evidence they were being lied to).
The bookseller issue is a big deal, yes. And it’s completely irrelevant to the extradition law. If it were, then the Chinese government wouldn’t need an extradition law, would it? It’s a deliberate conflation. If someone murders someone in the mainland and flees to Hong Kong to escape justice, what possible relationship does that have to the fact that a few booksellers were abducted on the mainland? Why relate them at all?
[There’s also a side channel here of the uncritical reporting of western media on Hong Kong as if it had a functioning rule of law, when its own barristers compare it to North Korea. Funny how a high conviction rate in Japan is a sign of a brutal and corrupt system but a high conviction rate in Hong Kong is fine …?]
Watching these demonstrators manage to peacefully demonstrate, block roads, disrupt life, for 4 months without serious injury when the police were murdering random people in Britain under much less sustained pressure, while British media constantly talk up the situation as if these people are the first and only people to hold a meaningful demonstration in the history of humanity, and British police would never act so cruelly … it’s disgusting.
August 6, 2019 at 2:10 pm
‘They lied about his death for days and found a corrupt coroner to do an autopsy, in a scandalous miscarriage of justice that took a year to be undone. Finally, after a second autopsy and an inquiry the police officer who killed him, PC Harwood, was found not guilty of manslaughter, and eventually dismissed from the police force.’
Coroners don’t conduct autopsies. Pathologists conduct autopsies; coroners conduct inquests.
According to the (extensively footnoted) Wikipedia account, a first autopsy found that he died of natural causes, a second autopsy six days later contradicted this, and a third autopsy (conducted, because of the disagreement between the first two, thirteen days after the second and nineteen days after the first) agreed with the second. Wikipedia gives some account of the record of the pathologist who conducted the first autopsy, who was eventually struck off by the General Medical Council, at least partly because of his conduct in this case.
The coroner who opened the inquest was replaced at his own request, made because he felt he lacked necessary expertise. The inquest concluded two years later: I can’t find anything in the Wikipedia account to explain this delay or to indicate whether it’s unusual. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’, and the Crown Prosecution Service reversed its earlier decision not to bring charges. Simon Harwood was tried for manslaughter and acquitted, but later dismissed for ‘gross misconduct’ after a disciplinary hearing.
None of this is a reason for a general challenge to the tendency of your remarks, but I think the details are worth getting right. (There are more details than I’ve given in the Wikipedia account, where anybody who wants can read them, and check the footnotes as well.)
‘… there is no extradition treaty with Taiwan …’
Some people would like a discussion of why there’s no extradition treaty with Taiwan (and, perhaps, of whose fault that is); some people would not.
‘Funny how a high conviction rate in Japan is a sign of a brutal and corrupt system but a high conviction rate in Hong Kong is fine …?’
I can’t figure out what are appropriate conclusions to draw from a high conviction rate, what are appropriate conclusions to draw from a low conviction rate, and what sort of conviction rate is a sign of a system functioning well.
Sorry if any of these remarks distract from the general point you’re making which, as I mentioned, I have no reason to challenge.
August 6, 2019 at 2:29 pm
Thanks for the corrections J-D, you’re right that they don’t detract from the general thrust of my anger about Tomlinson’s death (I was in London at the time and the coverage was shocking, and he and his family have never received justice, though I think they got an “undisclosed” compensation payment eventually).
The extradition law is actually really hard to learn about because when you google it all the information for the first couple of pages is news about the riots. But the South China Morning Post has some details of the history of the law and the extradition situation. From what I learnt, a similar law was originally proposed soon after HK was returned to China but dropped for reasons I haven’t been able to discover. As a result HK has extradition treaties with only about just over 20 countries, which I guess date from pre-handover times. They don’t include Taiwan or mainland China or a bunch of other countries. Here is a summary of the law which notes that for an extradition request to be considered the penalty has to be >7 years in prison, it has to be a crime in HK and the other jurisdiction, and it has to be within a list of 37 allowable offences. Note the offences that have been removed from the list under pressure from the small clique of rich people who own Hong Kong! I think a more interesting question than “why there’s no extradition treaty with Taiwan” (a decision that was made by the British) is why have the Taiwanese government indicated they won’t request the murderer to be extradited? They’re playing politics with justice, is why.
Regarding the high conviction rate, western media generally present very high conviction rates as a sign of a corrupt legal system. See e.g. this Telegraph article, and it has routinely been presented as evidence that the Japanese judicial system is flawed. Actually the figures on China’s high conviction rate are very dubious, because they exclude a bunch of cases that never get taken to trial and perhaps don’t take into account the different way the system works – it also takes a lot of digging on the internet to find the source of the number, since most newspaper articles ping each other (it took me a long time to dig up the source because lots of media report 99.9% but they all refer to each other, and only this Telegraph article actually hints at the source, which requires further digging and reveals that perhaps 20% of cases never go to trial because judges don’t give prosecutors permission to proceed). I agree with you that it’s hard to draw any conclusions from the conviction rate, but that doesn’t stop western media from constantly using it as a stick to beat Asian nations – you can bet that if the UK had a 99% conviction rate they’d be parading it as evidence of how great liberal democracy is, not a sign that the police are beating people until they confess. But this selective reporting, and the challenge of finding any factual information about the extradition law or the quality of Hong Kong justice, is a routine problem in trying to understand what’s happening outside of the US and the UK. You also don’t see western media talking much about the four families that own Hong Kong or the effect they have on governance and corruption in the territory. But by some remarkable coincidence every single bit of misreporting or elided fact always shows the west and Hong Kong’s former colonial master in a favourable light, and works to support Hong Kong independence. What are the chances!?
August 7, 2019 at 7:10 am
1. According to the Wikipedia account, Tomlinson’s family sued and the case was settled out of court. It’s usual for settlement amounts to be subject to non-disclosure agreements, so it tells us nothing specific about this case.
2. If you follow the link you gave, you can find your way to a list of Hong Kong’s extradition agreements, with links to their actual text (in English). There are recent ones saying that the government of Hong Kong has entered into them having been authorised to do so by the government of the PRC, and there are older ones saying that the government of Hong Kong has entered into them having been authorised to do so by the sovereign government responsible for Hong Kong’s foreign relations (in other words, at the relevant time, the United Kingdom).
For both periods, the reason Hong Kong has not entered into an extradition agreement with Taiwan is the same: it is because of China’s insistence on the one-China principle. So it’s the PRC’s fault that there is no agreement; and there will continue to be no agreement, and it will continue to be the PRC’s fault.
3. I agree that no sensible conclusions about a legal system, good or bad, can be based solely on a conviction rate figure independent of context, and attempts to do so must be biassed.
August 7, 2019 at 10:17 am
J-D,
1. sorry I’m not sure why I put “undisclosed” in quotes, I wasn’t trying to imply anything unusual about that.
2. I think your point 2 is a bit unfair. For both periods you give, the reason Hong Kong has not entered into an extradition agreement is not “because of China’s insistence on the one-China principle.” Since 1972 the UK has recognized the One China Policy and has no official relations with Taiwan. It’s as much the UK’s fault as China’s that there is no extradition agreement. Also full extradition agreements require negotiations between states, and it’s a little unfair to accuse China of being the one that won’t do this; recall Taiwan doesn’t recognize the CPC as the legitimate ruler of China, and have openly stated that they won’t seek to extradite a murderer. Why should we assume that China is the only one at fault? Furthermore, this law is an effort to remedy the problem that some states won’t make deals with HK. In fact China itself can’t extradite criminals from HK because it has no extradition agreement. It could end this tomorrow by absorbing HK into the PRC but it won’t because it is adhering to the One China Two Systems agreement it made with the UK – an agreement it could abolish tomorrow with very few real consequences. So rather than regularize the laws of the two territories it has introduced a law that enables the HK government to consider extradition requests from other states on a unilateral basis. If any other country did this I think it would be seen as a positive, good faith move by a responsible global actor. Yet when China does it it’s a sinister move to suppress free speech and free assembly even though the law explicitly doesn’t allow that. Why should you say it’s “the PRC’s fault” that there is no extradition agreement when Taiwan refuse to recognize the PRC and have openly stated that they won’t use this extradition law if it is enacted? Surely they’re just as much to blame?
Furthermore, this law allows states with legal systems far worse than China’s – states like Saudi Arabia – to request extradition. Where would you rather be extradited for an armed robbery – KSA or PRC? I think we both know the answer to that. Yet no western media have mentioned that. And it is a valid possibility – KSA and UAE etc. have many foreign nationals working there who might be expected to flee precisely because the criminal justice system there is so terrifying. Yet only China gets any attention, and with a dubious misrepresentation of the purpose and scope of the law.
August 7, 2019 at 10:34 am
Obviously the ‘cross-straits relations’ issue is a complicated one. It seems to me that because the People’s Republic is by far the bigger and stronger of the two parties, it’s much more likely that improvements could be produced by a relaxation of their position: it’s not certain that such a relaxation would prompt movement from the other side, but it’s likely. Still, I concede that the Taiwanese authorities almost certainly have at least some share in the blame.
I also concede that the UK must have at least some share in the blame for the absence of a treaty for extradition between Hong Kong and Taiwan–just like all the other countries that are unwilling to treat with the Taiwanese authorities in defiance of PRC pressure. But surely more blame attaches to the PRC for applying that pressure than to the countries that succumb to it?
Again, I don’t challenge your basic point that Western media accounts are distorted by political bias (among other things, perhaps).
August 7, 2019 at 12:07 pm
Indeed, to make a final assertion about who is ultimately to blame requires taking a position on the One China Policy. If it’s a fair position for the CPC to take then presumably they aren’t primarily to blame; but if the One China Policy is an unreasonable policy then they are more to blame. Given that the UK and Australian governments adopted the One China Policy in 1972 when Taiwan was voted off its seat in the UN, then I thin if you put any stock in the political and ethical reasons for their policy positions you should probably accept that there is some validity to the CPC’s position. But basically the world largely agrees that Taiwan is part of China, and until the UN changes its view on that it remains the case that Taiwan is holding out against reunification with dwindling support. If you support a rules-based international order with the UN taking primacy over the way the international order operates, then I think you have to accept that Taiwan shares a fair portion of blame for whatever hurdles arise in forming agreements like this.
I also think that if any other country passed a law like this that allowed extradition to states without extradition agreements on a case-by-case basis, people would say it was acting in good faith and being a good international citizen. This is particularly the case if historically that country had been a bit of a tax haven and had a bit of reputation for facilitating corruption and disorder. It would certainly be seen approvingly if e.g. Switzerland allowed countries affected by corruption and tax evasion to request extradition of Swiss citizens who had broken tax laws in their country. This is important in the Hong Kong context because rich mainlanders can buy citizenship in HK and use it to escape corruption charges in China. Those corruption charges are often politically motivated, but in many cases the corruption is real and the people who defrauded Chinese taxpayers and fled the law should be found and sent back. If HK continues to act as a haven for people guilty of serious corruption in the mainland, then the pressure for the CPC to renege on their agreement with the UK and just fully annex HK will grow. And why not? Corruption is a big issue in China and has been one of the main ways in which the CPC loses public support, as well as a drag on the development that Chinese rural areas still need. I don’t see why One Country Two Systems should be allowed to stand in the way of the CPC’s very real (if often politically tainted) drive to eliminate corruption in China.
August 8, 2019 at 10:48 am
Taking your points in reverse order:
1. The only good reason for Hong Kong not being governed by the same system as the rest of the People’s Republic would be if the people of Hong Kong didn’t want it. I suspect, however, that in fact the people of Hong Kong don’t want to be governed by the same system as the rest of the People’s Republic. The undoubted difficulties in figuring out what the people of Hong Kong want result mostly from the fact that the government in Beijing doesn’t respect the people and their wishes, but that’s exactly the problem.
2. I can’t think of any good general reason why any one jurisdiction should not (unilaterally) adopt laws allowing for the possibility of considering extradition requests from other jurisdictions even in the absence of inter-governmental agreements to do so. Obviously the merits (or lack of them) of any particular law would depend on its exact wording, and on the context, but you could say the same thing about extradition treaties.
There may, however, be some objection I’m not thinking of. Clearly countries generally prefer to operate on the basis of extradition treaties rather than unilateral legislation, but now that I think about it I don’t know why this is.
Obviously any protections, restrictions, or other conditions which can be written into extradition treaties would be _at least_ as easy to write into (unilateral) legislation. For example, extradition usually requires some kind of court process. In principle, Hong Kong legislation could give exactly as much (or as little) protection by the Hong Kong court system (as bad or as good as that is) as an extradition treaty could.
3. As a matter of empirically observable fact, the government based in Beijing exercises governmental authority on the mainland but not on Taiwan, while the government based in Taipei exercises governmental authority on Taiwan (but not on the mainland). This remains the empirical fact even for people who believe that it should not be the case; the way things are is not controlled by the way things should be.
Whatever view one takes of the concept of ‘one China’ as a principle, it doesn’t automatically prevent, in practice, the governments of other jurisdictions making agreements with the effective government of Taiwan about the kinds of topics that inter-governmental agreements deal with (including extradition). By far the largest factor in preventing agreements of that kind is the known attitude of the government in Beijing, combined with the pressure it brings to bear, or is willing to bring to bear, or appears willing to bring to bear. Why would the government in Taipei be reluctant to negotiate agreements with governments in other jurisdictions, if the government in Beijing had no objection?
Obviously what happens in Taiwan is not determined exclusively by the wishes of the people who live there, it can’t be, and it probably shouldn’t be; but their wishes _should_ be a factor in determining what happens in Taiwan that carries more weight than the views of the government in Beijing, or of other governments, or of the United Nations. If a clear majority in Taiwan was unambiguously in favour of having the governmental authority of the People’s Republic extended over Taiwan, they almost certainly could have achieved that by now: so it seems reasonable to conclude that’s not what they want, and if it’s not what they want it shouldn’t be forced on them.
August 8, 2019 at 11:27 am
J-D in response:
1. No one has ever respected the people of Hong Kong or their wishes. You may recall that until 1997 they had no say in their domestic or international affairs, which were arranged in London. The correct thing to have done in 1997 would have been to return HK to China without conditions but (just as they did in India in 1948) the British like to sow discontent in their ex-colonies so they negotiated a deal which made sure that HK would resent the mainland and struggle for special treatment. And now, having been ruled by Britain with no say for 100 years, although British newspapers and media never cared about the rights of HK people when it was a colony, suddenly they think it’s very important that this one city have a special voice in Chinese affairs. Why could that be, I wonder? Why is the Daily mail or the Times suddenly so worried about the right to free expression of a people whose voice they ignored for 100 years when it was a British colony? I don’t think, incidentally, that there are any difficulties in figuring out what the people of HK want. The problem is that they don’t want what the rest of their country wants, and that puts them at odds with their leadership. The question then is whether western media are reporting on this with the same voice as they use when the people of e.g. Ferguson oppose their national government, or the people of London oppose their national government. And it seems clear to me they are not.
2. I had never thought about the idea of a unilateral extradition law before, and it’s a surprise to see one enacted. I guess that extradition treaties typically have to be bilateral because as you say they require court and judicial processes to be enacted, and this requires agreements. (For example if China signs an extradition agreement with the UK then the very large differences in their legal systems would need to be negotiated in order to arrange the details of the process). Apparently the US cooperates on extradition requests outside of treaties and sent corruption suspects to China in 2014 without protest. So I guess every country can do this but the HK law simply formalizes it for HK. I have also discovered in the process of reading about this situation that China has extradition treaties with 55 countries but will not extradite Chinese nationals. This wikipedia article appears outdated though because I also discovered China has an extradition agreement with Australia in which it “may” extradite Chinese nationals to Australia and if it refuses then Australia can request for them to be tried under Chinese domestic law for whatever crime they committed. I’m not sure exactly how far that law has gone for ratification, but I think it shows that within the broad boundaries of international behavior China isn’t behaving terribly or particularly exceptionally well. So it really surprises me that this extradition law in Hong Kong is being treated as such an exceptional and outrageous thing.
3. I agree that in practice governments could make deals directly with Taiwan regardless of their particular view of the one China policy, but in practice most governments seem to agree with China on the One China Policy, and it would be ridiculous for them to deal with Taiwan as a state when they don’t recognize its right to exist. I think this means that in practice, what you think of the one China policy is important to your view of the law. If you think that the One China Policy is legitimate, then you should accept that Taiwan does not have the right to conduct international relations, and you should give a fair hearing to Chinese claims that on this or that issue you should not deal with Taiwan. That doesn’t mean you should agree with the Chinese government on every aspect of how you deal with Taiwan, but in the case for example of extradition treaties it might actually be fair to say that you will extradite Taiwanese criminals to China and not to Taiwan (since you don’t recognize the Taiwanese government), which is actually what appears to happen in practice. So yes that means it is Beijing’s fault that there is no extradition treaty between e.g. Australia and Taiwan, but it does not mean it’s entirely Beijing’s fault that there is no extradition treaty between HK (part of China) and Taiwan, since Taiwan has made clear it won’t deal with China. Taiwan could solve all these problems tomorrow by giving up a claim to nationhood, and becoming part of China, as apparently the Australian government thinks it should. And if you support the One China Policy then presumably you think this is what Taiwan should do …
August 9, 2019 at 10:09 am
1. ‘No one has ever respected the people of Hong Kong or their wishes.’
I implied earlier that the wishes of the people of Hong Kong should be respected (although I did not intend to imply that their wishes should be respected and nobody else’s wishes should be respected), but I also wrote earlier that what should be does not control what is. I know that. It’s not a reason to refrain from discussing how people should behave.
‘I don’t think, incidentally, that there are any difficulties in figuring out what the people of HK want. The problem is that they don’t want what the rest of their country wants, and that puts them at odds with their leadership.’
It’s much harder to tell what the wishes are of the people in the rest of the PRC than it is to tell what the wishes are of the people of Hong Kong. However, even if it were true that the rest of the population wanted Hong Kong to be governed under the same system as the rest of the country, that would not be sufficient justification to override the wishes of the people of Hong Kong.
Going a little further, it’s even possible that the majority of the people of the PRC don’t want the system they’re presently governed by, in which case their wishes also should be respected, although obviously that’s not an argument that’s going to carry any weight with their government, which shows no signs of willingness to have the people’s opinion on the issue tested.
2. ‘I guess that extradition treaties typically have to be bilateral because as you say they require court and judicial processes to be enacted, and this requires agreements. (For example if China signs an extradition agreement with the UK then the very large differences in their legal systems would need to be negotiated in order to arrange the details of the process).’
I think that’s not quite it. I can’t think of any reason why a jurisdiction should not legislate to allow the consideration of extradition requests from other jurisdictions even in the absence of a treaty, and such legislation could, as far as I can tell, unilaterally regulate the terms and conditions, require a judicial process, and regulate the workings of that judicial process. ‘We’ can provide that ‘we’ will consider requests from ‘you’, and when ‘we’ will approve requests and when ‘we’ will disapprove them, without requiring ‘your’ agreement to any those provisions.
Here where I am, in Australia, as well as having arrangements for considering international extradition requests, we also have a system for extradition between the Australian States. That system doesn’t require inter-jurisdictional agreements between the States, because our Constitution allows the Commonwealth Parliament to legislate on the subject, and the Commonwealth Parliament has actually done so. I don’t know what sort of discussions with the States may in fact have taken place before the Commonwealth Parliament legislated, but evidently the Commonwealth Parliament has in principle the power to legislate unilaterally on this subject.
‘ I have also discovered in the process of reading about this situation that China has extradition treaties with 55 countries but will not extradite Chinese nationals. This wikipedia article appears outdated though because I also discovered China has an extradition agreement with Australia in which it “may” extradite Chinese nationals to Australia and if it refuses then Australia can request for them to be tried under Chinese domestic law for whatever crime they committed. I’m not sure exactly how far that law has gone for ratification, but I think it shows that within the broad boundaries of international behavior China isn’t behaving terribly or particularly exceptionally well.’
I assume that extradition treaties are not all identical in their terms, but from my reading on the subject there are some provisions which appear routinely, and one of these is that countries reserve the right not to extradite their own nationals even if the other usual conditions for extradition are met. My impression is, though, that — in the case of Australia, for example — the decision whether to exercise this privilege or waive it is at the discretion of the government of Australia, so the possibility of an Australian citizen being extradited from Australia to another country is not absolutely ruled out. My impression is, though, that waiver of the privilege is the exception rather than the rule.
‘So it really surprises me that this extradition law in Hong Kong is being treated as such an exceptional and outrageous thing.’
Maybe you are more easily surprised than I am.
3. My view, as previously stated, is that the preference of the people of Taiwan is _not_ to have the governmental authority of the PRC extended over Taiwan, and that this preference should _not_ be overridden by the preferences of the government of the PRC, or the preferences of other governments, or the preferences of the UN. If it’s your view that the governmental authority of the PRC _should_ be extended over Taiwan, regardless of the preference of the Taiwanese people, I am curious to know what argument you would give in favour of that view.
August 9, 2019 at 11:41 am
J-D, I think actually most mainlanders – even those critical of the CPC – want HK to be a full and integral part of China, and either consider the one country two systems thing to be a continuing aspect of China’s humiliation by the British, or an annoying but necessary compromise in order to get back what is rightfully theirs. When I was in China last week it was noticeable that for the first time in a long time all media from outside China (all western media, English or not) were blocked completely, so all the news mainlanders saw was blanket coverage of HK protestors doing bad things, and in particular the anti-mainlander racism (which is quite easy to find if you look) and the independence activism. This enables the Chinese media to appeal to a very strong desire of Chinese people to maintain the territorial integrity of the nation and to maintain One China (which is very popular in China). It’s almost the mirror image of what western media show and very similar to how the western media depicted the London protests – another reason I’m angry at the shameful behavior of western media, because why are we trumpeting our free speech rights when western media voluntarily do what Chinese media are forced to do?
So anyway in summary I think it’s pretty easy for the Chinese government to see what ordinary mainland Chinese want and manipulate the media accordingly.
It is interesting why extradition treaties rather than unilateral legislation are necessary. I assume there is a reason! I guess the most likely one is that if everything were done unilaterally on a case-by-case basis then politically-motivated refusals on one side would lead to politically-motivated refusals on the other side and the extradition process would ultimately break down. But when there’s an agreement with rule that both sides agree to, both sides can just ignore the politics. So it makes sense to make agreements and for a country like Australia – very vulnerable internationally and lacking any power – it will be very hard to refuse extradition requests on a political basis and very easy for China to resist them. Something that British people seem to have forgot during their long period in the EU is that the international order does actually protect small countries, and being a small country requires making a lot of concessions and accepting a lot of bad deals. So it makes sense to negotiate a deal that removes politics from the extradition process.
I did not want to turn this post into a discussion of the One China Policy but it is my general view that Taiwan is a gangster leadership that invaded the island, killed and terrorized the natives, and asserted that it is the real leader of China on the basis purely of having a different political position than the party that actually won the civil war. They ran a long period of terror and dictatorship and only recently became a democracy, the situation of minorities in their country is very poor and there is a lot wrong with their government. It would be like if One Nation, having lost the popular vote, retreated to Fraser Island and declared they were the legitimate leaders of Australia, then ran to the UN to demand a place in the assembly. What would Australians think of that? I don’t think that the return of Taiwan to China is worth a war and if the issue can only be resolved by war I don’t support the One China Policy, but if there is a peaceful way to integrate Taiwan into the mainland and to end the dispute, then I think it should be resolved in favour of the CPC, who whatever their many flaws are the legitimate rulers of China. I also don’t see any reason to conflate the One China Policy with whether the countries are democratic or free or not, it’s a simple matter of sovereignty. It’s my hope that in future the PRC will be free, democratic and socialist, but that is a separate issue to whether or not Taiwan is part of China.
(I don’t think there is a peaceful way to resolve this dispute until China becomes so rich, free and peaceful that the people of Taiwan demand reunification – and it is my hope that that is what will happen, even if not in my lifetime).
August 9, 2019 at 2:12 pm
‘… it’s a simple matter of sovereignty.’
What makes you think sovereignty is a simple matter?
‘… the CPC, who whatever their many flaws are the legitimate rulers of China …’
I’m not sure on what basis you distinguish between legitimate rulers and illegitimate rulers.
You’ve referred to international recognition, and there’s no question that the CPC government is the internationally recognised government of China, but using international recognition as a criterion can’t provide any answers to questions about which governments _should_ receive recognition.
In international affairs there’s sometimes invocation of a principle of _de facto_ recognition, under which recognition (or a form of it) is granted to whichever government is in fact in control of a territory. On this basis, certainly, the government in Beijing would be recognised as the government of China, but on the same basis the government in Taipei would have to be recognised as the government of Taiwan, except for the fact that it apparently doesn’t seek and wouldn’t accept recognition as the government of Taiwan.
In some instances, it may be feasible to judge questions of legitimacy on the basis of a well-established system for determining how governmental power is acquired, assigned, and transferred, although even in countries which have that kind of system the time when notions of ‘legitimacy’ are invoked is generally a time when the functioning of the system has been disrupted by disputes. In this instance, the CPC has a system which assigns it governmental authority over China, but there’s a different system in operation in Taiwan, so what’s the basis for deciding which of those systems is ‘legitimate’?
To my way of thinking, there’s a reasonably clear distinction between governmental systems which the subject population would prefer to retain and governmental systems which the subject population would prefer to have replaced, but the problem with that is that governments which suspect they’re unwelcome are typically resistant to discovery of the population’s views. It’s possible that the people of China would prefer the continuation of CPC rule, but is there any way to check? I don’t think the CPC wants the answer to that question tested, and obviously they’re in a position to prevent it.
On the other hand, it’s a reasonably safe conclusion that the Taiwanese population (for now) prefers the continuation of the present system to the alternative of coming under CPC rule, and I can’t figure how any abstract principle of ‘sovereignty’ or ‘legitimacy’ would justify overriding that preference.
Likewise, I can’t figure on what basis the preference of the PRC population for Hong Kong to be brought under the same system (even if that is their preference, about which I am agnostic) would justify overriding the preference of the people of Hong Kong for that not to happen.
In the interests of clarity, I’m going to mention some other points where I think I agree with you, or at least don’t challenge your assertions.
I am sure there is still extensive resentment in China of past humiliations at the hands of the British (and also other Western countries), although I imagine it might be difficult to test the breadth or depth of that resentment (and I suppose I should add that I acknowledge that China and its people were cruelly and unjustly treated by Western powers over a long period of time: I’m not an expert on Chinese history, but I do know enough to be aware of this).
I don’t recall ever thinking before about bigotry in Hong Kong against mainlanders, but I’m not surprised to be told about it and if I did ever think about it previously, I probably would have predicted it on the basis of general principles. Also, like all bigotry I repudiate and deplore it. Thinking about it further, I expect this bigotry is naturally and justly resented by mainlanders.
If you have gathered any general impression of my political attitudes, I hope you wouldn’t have imagined that I would be a defender or supporter of the KMT? I’m not an expert on Taiwanese history, but I know enough to be aware that it was ruled for decades by a repressive dictatorship. I am also aware, more specifically, that Taiwan has an indigenous population which has long suffered cruelty and injustice at the hands of the Han Chinese population.
At the risk of repeating myself, formal recognition by other countries of the government in Taipei as the government of a country separate from China is obviously impossible so long as the government in Taipei does not declare itself to be the government of a country separate from China and seek recognition as such, and the responsibility for a situation where that doesn’t happen must rest at least partly on the Taiwanese side of the dispute.
However, all these points on which I think we agree don’t make me change my views on the points on which we seem to disagree, and I can’t find any reason why they should.
August 9, 2019 at 2:33 pm
By “simple” here I meant “only about one thing”, not “easy”. Calculating the movement of the tides is a simple matter of gravitational field theory, but it’s not easy.
I appreciate and agree that determining the “legitimate” rulers of a nation is difficult and it can change over time, too. But to my mind running away from the country, murdering your neighbours, setting up a 38 year reign of terror, and then demanding the right to be the ruler of the country you ran away from, doesn’t qualify you. And over the past 70 years the CPC have proven themselves to be able to manage their country, so I see no reason to hand it back to the KMT. Also, there was an independence movement in Taiwan who were opposed to the KMT, and it used to be that there was a big question over who was the “legitimate” representative of popular rule in Taiwan. But with US help the KMT murdered, imprisoned and destroyed those people and that movement, assassinating dissidents as recently as the mid-1980s. So I don’t think they can have any more claim to legitimacy over anything than the CPC.
Regarding whether HK should be brought under PRC control, that is not going to happen until 2047, by which time I think it’s safe to say HK opinion on the matter is likely to change (will HK even be a livable city under the influence of climate change, in 2047? Will Guangzhou?) So for now the wishes of the people of HK are at least partly being met, since they get to enjoy the two systems (and HK is very different to mainland China as a result). If the UK wanted to fully respect their wishes it could have negotiated to keep HK, or made it fully independent, but it didn’t. I’m not sure why PRC (population 1.4 billion) should relinquish a long-standing political claim on a territory (population 10 million?) that was historically always Chinese, just because the British stole it for 100 years and poisoned the atmosphere. If Japan nicked Tasmania tomorrow and 100 years later handed it back, I don’t think anyone on the Aussie mainland would be arguing it should be independent because its culture had changed. That’s not the way national liberation works.
(Actually a decolonizing Tasmania 100 years after Japanese victory in the Pacific War would make a pretty interesting role-playing setting!)
Unpicking colonialism is hard, and leads to a lot of damage in the post-colonial states (look at Kashmir now). But this is not originally the fault of the national liberation movements that want their country back, and the possibility that the liberation process could be hard or dangerous or difficult is no reason to say they don’t have the right to try. And the decolonization process will inevitably have losers – the satraps and subservient elites will likely lose power and privilege to the decolonizing national liberation movements. In many ways HK residents were an elite in China, set up as a subservient elite to their colonial masters. It is natural that they will lose rights and privileges in the decolonizing process and that is right. For example, one thing that is very certain to happen after 2047 is the four families that own HK are going to lose their monopoly power and have to start competing in a free marketplace. They don’t want that, but it’s right and fair (and good for HK people) that that happens. They got their wealth and power by playing the colonial game, and it’s right that they lose that wealth and power once decolonization is complete. If Britain were a responsible power she would have handed HK back without conditions, and with reparations for the massive damage done during the Opium Wars, but instead she used her leverage (no longer so great!) to force China to accept divisive terms on the return of the territory. These demonstrations are the result of that poison moving through the system, just as what is happening in Kashmir is the final sting in the tail of the scorpion of the Division. How well the Chinese government handles this is a sign of how good they are as leaders, but even if they fuck it all up, ultimately the cause is the UK’s colonial antics and rapacious attitude towards Asia, not the Chinese government disrespecting the wishes of the residents of HK.
And on the decolonization note: a large part of the reason that the Guardian et al are reporting so breathlessly and showing so much bias on HK is that they are acting as agents of the UK (or broader western) government. But it is also partly because the UK has still failed to face up to its colonial past, and has a blindspot when it comes to understanding how people outside of the UK feel about the colonial era. This is why the bureau chief of a news agency in HK was actually defending a claim that the opium war was good for China: because most British elites still believe (as Boris Johnson does, for example) that colonialism was good for the countries they colonized. Until they face what they did and understand how wrong and destructive it was, they will fail to understand the depth of feeling against them, and the intensity of the national liberation movements arrayed against them.
August 11, 2019 at 8:35 am
I would have imagined you were aware that the current government in Taipei is not a KMT government: both President Tsai Ing-wen and Premier Su Tseng-chang are from the DPP, so it’s unfair to attach blame to them (or their DPP colleagues) for the acknowledged crimes of the KMT. (It’s not necessary for you to itemise the crimes of the KMT; I’ve been making no attempt to deny or excuse them.)
Also, I would have hoped you’d have sufficient grasp of my attitudes by now to realise that I wouldn’t be claiming either that the authority of the government in Taipei should be recognised on the mainland or that the authority of the KMT should be recognised on the mainland. If the government in Taipei (or the KMT) continues to maintain any such claim, it’s both utterly unjustified and ludicrously futile (probably even harmful).
(So if I don’t accept that the government in Taipei has a justified claim to exercise governmental authority over mainland China, and I also don’t accept that the CPC government in Beijing has a justified claim to exercise governmental authority over mainland China, who do I think has such a claim? Nobody, that’s who. The justification for exercising governmental authority over a territory is the preference of the inhabitants, and in this case the preference of the inhabitants is unknown and undiscoverable.)
‘Regarding whether HK should be brought under PRC control, that is not going to happen until 2047 …’
Well, that’s what the agreement says. Some people say the PRC has already violated parts of that agreement. Even if those accusations are baseless, it’s obvious that if the PRC did decide to disregard or repudiate the agreement and fully integrate Hong Kong into the PRC system now, rather than in 2047, neither the UK nor anybody else would be physically able to prevent the change. So discussion of the possibility is not meaningless.
I fully agree, however, that so much may have changed by 2047 that present discussion will have become irrelevant by then.
‘I’m not sure why PRC (population 1.4 billion) should relinquish a long-standing political claim on a territory (population 10 million?) that was historically always Chinese, just because the British stole it for 100 years and poisoned the atmosphere.’
That’s not an argument I’m making. What I would argue is that _if_ it were definitely established (which I acknowledge is isn’t) that the current preference of the inhabitants of Hong Kong was for the PRC to relinquish its claim, that would be a sufficient justification (although I am well aware that this argument would have no influence with the government in Beijing).
For many countries, a major part of their historical foundation is the unjust and violent dispossession of previous inhabitants. This may even be true for all countries, although in many cases it’s hard to be sure because the dispossession may have occurred in prehistoric or very early historic times, leaving fragmentary evidence at most. It’s certainly true of my own country. A major part of the historical base on which modern Australia was founded is the unjust and violent dispossession of the Indigenous Australians. A further point is that not only do modern (non-Indigenous) Australians continue to enjoy the gains made from that injustice, but modern Indigenous Australians continue to the suffer the effects of loss. This further point is not paralleled in all cases because for some anciently dispossessed peoples there’s no surviving modern group that shares an identity with them. Where they do, however, the inheritance of the spoils of past injustice carries with a moral obligation to make redress. Specifically, for example, modern Australia inherits an obligation to make reparations to contemporary Indigenous Australians. Obviously I didn’t come up with that idea by myself: many people, correctly and justly, advocate for some form of reparations. As far as I know, however, nobody advocates for the dispossession of contemporary non-Indigenous Australians as a form of redress, and it wouldn’t be just if they did. Dispossession would be unjust because for most of the contemporary inhabitants, modern Australia is their (only) home, and depriving people of their home is usually cruel and unjust. I don’t know enough about the specific history and modern conditions of Hong Kong to know what sort of reparation is justly owing now for continuing effects of the nineteenth-century British seizure, but I do know that it doesn’t include wholesale deprivation of their home for the modern inhabitants.
August 11, 2019 at 1:48 pm
As J-D says, imperialism and colonialism are as old as time, and most of the victims either absorbed or dead (who remembers the Wends?). Also, just what the bounds of a state are is problematic. While I’m sympathetic to J-D’s argument that the wishes of the inhabitants should be paramount, it’s easy to see that this cannot be taken too far. Should Sydney be able to secede from NSW? Or Hutt River from Australia (RIP Price Leonard)?
In the Chinese case, pretty much all Han Chinese are passionately committed to the unity of China – including Taiwan and HK. It’s the form of unity they differ on. Tibetans and Uighurs get no say. It’s a major theme in their national myth.
Does it also matter what one intends to use independence for? Hello, US Civil War. All too often it’s about license to oppress one’s minorities in peace.
Also imperialism is often not straightforward. India, to use faustus’ example, was constructed and maintained by a coalition of British and Indians. Clive’s army at Plassey was financed by Indian merchants tired of local misrule, and the Company’s victories won by Indian troops. Indians were the junior partners after 1800, but when they wanted out they got out – there was no resisting the demand (300 million Indians, fewer than 10,000 British administrators and officers). The Raj lived on in Nehru and Gandhi.
So no easy answers.
August 12, 2019 at 11:50 am
Peter T, I think you are always too sanguine about colonial history. There are still people in Taiwan who were alive during the Japanese colonial period, which ended in 1945; Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a colony in the late 19th century, in about the same era of British colonial meddling as when China lost Hong Kong. They have a strong post-colonial claim to getting their land back, having lost it to 50 years of colonial history that should not have ended with Taiwan as a separate country just because the KMT invaded it. The PRC’s claim to Taiwan is no weaker than South Korea’s claim to reunify with North Korea, the Palestinian right of return or the Irish reunification. Yes at some point colonial history has to be forgotten and it has to be accepted that borders changed and nations were reforged but the remnants of the late Victorian colonial era are not ancient history – especially when the colonial periods in question ended in the 1950s. It’s always the beneficiaries of colonialism (usually white people in Britain or Oz) who claim that recent colonial history should be just forgotten because some colonies were formed and forgotten 1000 years ago. For better or worse PRC is a post-colonial project, aimed at reunifying the China of the Qing era – before it was carved up by westerners – and securing its borders against future aggression of the same kind.
It’s possible to respect a post-colonial project without necessarily thinking it should actually happen. For example, a one state solution to what’s going on in Palestine that incorporates the right of return is a just response to the dispossession and large scale murder of Palestinians that happened in the Nakbah, but since then two generations of Israelis have been born on stolen land and it wasn’t their choice to be there, so a one state solution that dispossesses them might not be seen as a just solution to the original problem. The same could be true of Taiwan – you can support the One China Policy as a principle while thinking it is not worth going to war over.
Also it’s worth noting that no one on either side of the straits disagrees with the One China Policy. The dispute is over who gets to be in charge of a reunified China.
August 12, 2019 at 6:49 pm
‘Also it’s worth noting that no one on either side of the straits disagrees with the One China Policy. The dispute is over who gets to be in charge of a reunified China.’
That’s a bit like saying that Lancaster and York agree on the ‘One Kingdom Policy’ and the dispute is over who should be king; or like saying that two tennis players agree on the ‘One Winner Policy’ and the dispute is over which of them it should be.
The difference between absorbing and being absorbed is fundamental.
The ‘One China Policy’ is a verbal quibble papering over an irresoluble disagreement. It translates into no practical implications for choices that people actually have to make, except that it means that the government in Beijing will exert as much influence as it can (and it can exert a lot) to prevent other governments making inter-governmental agreements with the government in Taipei. The government in Taipei behaved in a converse fashion back when it had more influence than it does now, although I don’t know whether they used ‘One China’ as a slogan back then.
Of course, a lot of diplomacy is concerned with finding verbal formulas that people can agree to in order to disguise the fact that they don’t actually agree. But then, a lot of diplomacy is just lies. In the context in which diplomats have to operate, the games they play can be useful, sometimes lifesavingly useful. That’s not a reason why we should pretend to play too.
August 12, 2019 at 8:15 pm
India was a bit peculiar, and I would not generalise too far from that. Worth noting that Han Chinese took over Taiwan in the 16th century (about the same time as the English made a serious effort to oust the Irish). There is still a small aboriginal population. How many generations erases the crime?
I have no answers. If I ran the world I would give Tibet back to Tibetans, and Turkestan to Uighurs, and Dakota to the Lakota….
August 12, 2019 at 9:49 pm
J-D it’s not so facetious if you think that there are actually four countries in the UK, and three of them don’t always agree with the United Kingdom policy – indeed they had a referendum about this a few years ago, and determined that for now they would retain the United Kingdom policy, though it is being put at risk by Brexit. The One China Policy is no less verbal quibble than the United Kingdom policy, it’s a simple statement of policy of the same kind, and it obviously depends to some extent on the consent of the governed – this is why there is so much trouble in Xinjiang and now Hong Kong. It’s also kind of ironic that the UK is making statements about this “verbal quibble” when you consider that the Good Friday Agreement is effectively the only thing stopping a similar irresoluble disagreement breaking out in the UK (again). What would the UK think if next year China started telling them they needed to respect the independence movement in Northern Ireland, and Chinese diplomatic staff met IRA members? (As US diplomatic staff did recently with Hong Kong demonstrators). How would the UK press react to that!?
Peter T, I’d wager that the Aboriginal minority in Taiwan would be better off under Chinese rule. I also have no answers, and after a certain period of time restitution and the right of return is hard to secure because of the people who have been born and raised on stolen land with no choice about their existence there. But I would say that the first step to figuring these things out is for western media to speak honestly and fairly about what is happening in the world.
August 13, 2019 at 9:57 am
‘Scotland should become an independent state separate from the United Kingdom’ is a serious statement of policy, with genuine practical meaning, and so is the converse, ‘Scotland should not become an independent state but should remain part of the United Kingdom’. There is a real practical question to which those are two possible answers: but ‘There is one Britain’ would not be an answer to that question, it would be an evasion of it.
Similarly, ‘Should Ireland be reunified?’ is a serious question, to which ‘Northern Ireland should continue to be part of the United Kingdom’ and ‘Northern Ireland should become part of the Republic of Ireland’ are both serious possible answers, but ‘There is one Ireland’ would not be a real practical answer to that question but an evasion of it.
August 13, 2019 at 10:11 am
J-D I think you’re engaging in semantics here? The One China Policy is simply a short-hand for a clear and definite policy, stated in the constitution of the PRC and in its policy documents, that the ultimate goal of the nation is to reunify Taiwan into the PRC. It’s not a verbal quibble.
Also I’m not sure but I think most major parties in Ireland have a “United Ireland” policy. And there appears to be some anger that Fianna Fail hasn’t come up with a comprehensive practical answer to how to achieve that. This is not a problem for China, which has both the principle and a practical plan.
August 13, 2019 at 5:28 pm
In the Constitution of the PRC I find this:
‘Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of the People’s Republic of China. It is the lofty duty of the entire Chinese people, including our compatriots in Taiwan, to accomplish the great task of reunifying the motherland.’
Surely the principle that Taiwan should be incorporated/reincorporated into the People’s Republic of China would not be accepted in Taiwan?
August 13, 2019 at 6:12 pm
Taiwan’s KMT appears to adhere to some weird One China, Two Interpretations policy, but it appears at base to rely on the idea that Taiwan will be incorporated into China – with the KMT in charge. Not rocket science really …
August 14, 2019 at 7:56 am
I’m not sure how much of the KMT’s position is clear, but one thing which is clear is that the KMT does _not_ agree with the principle that Taiwan should be incorporated/reincorporated into the People’s Republic of China, as advocated in the PRC Constitution. So that’s not an example of agreement, it’s an example of disagreement.