Cross-Strait solidarity: Hongkongers and Taiwanese know they have to help save each other

Originally published by the Hong Kong Free Press on 24/08/2019.

“It is our Taiwan; we got to save it ourselves” was the rallying cry of Sunflower activists when they occupied their country’s Legislative Yuan in March 2014. Later that year, the slogan “Our Hong Kong, let’s save it ourselves” would become almost as synonymous as the yellow umbrella with the occupation of the city’s streets.

Both Sunflower and Umbrella movement activists proclaimed their commitment to democracy and their opposition to the People’s Republic of China. It is, therefore, no surprise that these protests have been linked together in the minds of outside observers. The connection has been made by activists and participants in Taiwan and Hong Kong too. In what might be one of the few positive examples of cross-strait relations in recent years.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE.

Labour must stand with Hongkongers

Originally published by Labour Uncut on 23/08/2019.

Tom Watson is right the United Kingdom must not sit idly by while Hongkongers lose their rights and freedoms – and neither should the Labour Party.

On 16 August the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party addressed, via video, thousands of pro-democracy protesters who had gathered at the Charter Garden in Hong Kong. The desire of those attending the Power to the People rally was a simple one, to have a government which was accountable to them, the citizens. Watson offered his solidarity and called on the British government to give “direct moral support for the people of Hong Kong”.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE.

If the UK’s new PM wants to be free from China, he should meet the Dalai Lama

Originally published by the Hong Kong Free Press on 15/07/2019.

In his column for The Times of London last October, the writer Edward Lucas invited his readers to consider whether or not they lived in a free country. For Lucas, the answer to this multifaceted question came in the form of one simple test: do your politicians feel free to meet the Dalai Lama?

“If the answer is no, then you are part of the Chinese empire – you just haven’t realised it yet”, he said.

British Prime Minister (PM) Theresa May, who departed for the backbenches on Wednesday to be replaced by Boris Johnson, has unquestionably failed the “Tibet Test.” The fact many of her predecessors have barely passed, with a couple of C’s in the New Labour years and a derisory D-minus for David “Golden-Era” Cameron, is of no comfort. The outgoing occupant of No.10 Downing Street sets a new low as she becomes the first Prime Minister since John Major not to have met the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. Resulting in a big fat F for her.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE.

Politicking, polls, and Taiwan’s presidential primary: Can Tsai Ing-wen survive in 2020?

Originally published by the Hong Kong Free Press on 01/04/2019.

For politicos an election never seems far off. When the polls close and the results are announced for one election, the campaigning for the next one begins.

Last month, the country’s Central Election Commission announced that Taiwan’s Presidential and Legislative Yuan elections will be held on 11 January 2020. Yet the campaigning for these races really kicked off last November after the Taiwanese public cast their votes for council and mayoral candidates.

Prior to the November results, the question of who would be elected President in 2020 was significantly less interesting than it is now. Voters gave the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who hold the executive and legislature, a drubbing well beyond the typical kicking an incumbent gets.

The DPP lost half their mayors across the island to a surprisingly resurgent Kuomintang (KMT). The prize of the night for the nationalist KMT was the maverick Han Kuo-yu’s gain in the DPP’s southern stronghold Kaohsiung.

As I explained to friends unfamiliar with Taiwanese politics, this was the equivalent of a Southern populist Republican winning the state of Massachusetts.

Ever since the green wave which brought President Tsai Ing-wen to power, and gave the DPP a majority in the Legislative Yuan for the first time in the country’s history, a quick KMT comeback was written off. November’s results changed this. Moreover, it brought into question Tsai’s re-selection as the DPP’s presidential nominee.

Enter Lai Ching-te, the former deputy of Tsai, who – last month – entered the race to become the DPP’s Presidential candidate. While a run for the presidency was widely expected of him at some point, this challenge came as a surprise to many within the party.

Read full article here. 

Australia canary in the coal mine

Originally published by the Taipei Times on 11/03/2019.

In March last year, journalist John Garnaut warned readers of Foreign Affairs that “Australia is the canary in the coal mine of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference.”

He highlighted numerous cases of the CCP working to covertly manipulate his country’s political system, from access buying and Beijing-linked political donors to the hijacking of universities for party propaganda.

Similar meddling has also been documented in New Zealand by academic Anne-Marie Brady, a China specialist, who as a result has herself been the target of pro-China harassment.

Miners used to quickly exit the toxin-filled mine shafts after their caged canaries dropped dead, but when it comes to Beijing and its suffocation of free societies, liberal democracies have been slow to notice the early indicators.

Read full article here.

The case of Gui Minhai: The Rushdie affair revisited – with less bloodshed and less international interest

Originally published on the Hong Kong Free Press on 10/03/2019.

Thirty years on from the Rushdie Affair, the ongoing detention of Gui Minhai in China is yet another reminder of the threat that dictators pose to free expression.

At the end of the 20th century you could be forgiven for being an optimist. Fifty years after the defeat of fascism in Europe, the other great totalitarian threat, Soviet communism, had crumbled as the world witnessed a succession of democratic waves from Latin America to East Asia. It was not that history itself had ended but as Francis Fukuyama put it, that liberal democracy had won.

The year 1989 will go down as a turning point in this struggle. In that year the Hungarian government began, physically, dismantling the iron curtain and the people of Poland ended communist party rule. Across Czechoslovakia thousands called for freedom while across the Baltic states a human chain, repudiating Soviet rule, formed. In November, the Berlin Wall, a cold war behemoth which had divided the city since 1961, was opened—momentous changes were taking place.

Yet, despite this huge release of human energy not all dictatorships fell and not all tyrants bowed to cries for freedom. The year 1989 also witnessed two events which foreshadowed the current challenges to free societies, and the ability of their citizens to express themselves.

Read full article here.

Para Los Muchos, No Los Pocos – Why The Left Should Unite Behind Juan Guaidó

Originally published on the Gerasites on 31/01/2019.

The decision by segments of the western Left to support Nicolás Maduro’s election rigging, human rights abusing government in Venezuela once again exposes their undemocratic and illiberal impulses. Over the past week they have spread the regime’s lies about; the causes of the country’s economic crisis, the political situation there, and about its left-leaning interim president Juan Guaidó. More worrying still, the indulgence of pro-Maduro propaganda is not confined to the old hard-Left here in Britain. Rather, it appears to be gaining traction amongst a new generation of American ‘progressives’ – a sea change which no doubt makes it politically savvy for Democratic presidential hopefuls to continue ignoring the cries from Caracas.

Read full article here.