Responding to the NPC’s revision of Hong Kong‘s electoral system, Ma said he felt it was a formal entry into history of the idea since Deng Xiaoping proposed one-country-two-systems in 1984, which is tantamount to declaring the death of one-country-two-systems, and he regretted it.
Ma Ying-jeou had a historic meeting with Xi Jinping as cross-strait leader in 2015 during his presidency, a period when those in power in Taiwan accepted the vague 1992 Consensus and thus cross-strait relations were better. If even Ma Ying-jeou says such things today, it is hard to believe that anyone in Taiwan still believes in one country, two systems, and that reunification by peaceful means is dead. The only way to achieve unification is through armed reunification.
Zhu Fenglian, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, responded the day before yesterday, saying he hoped the relevant political parties and people in Taiwan would “put aside their prejudices and distinguish right from wrong”.
Is it “prejudice” to say that Deng’s concept of “one country, two systems” is dead?
Rita Fan said that the “two systems” in “one country, two systems”, she believes is the economic system, not the political system.
What did Deng Xiaoping say? In 1982, he told Mrs. Dazhoul that after China’s takeover, “Hong Kong’s existing political and economic systems, and even most of the laws, can be retained. …… Hong Kong will still be capitalist, and many of the existing systems that are suitable will be maintained.”
Deng Xiaoping said in 1984 that Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong was “to be governed by Hong Kong people, mainly patriots. The future government of the Hong Kong SAR will be composed mainly of patriots, but of course it will also have to accommodate other people, and foreigners can be hired as advisers.” “The people elected by Hong Kong people to govern Hong Kong will be appointed by the central government, not sent by Beijing. To choose such people, there should of course be people from the left, as few as possible, but also people from the right, and preferably more people from the center.” Is “more” people, that is, “the main body”?
The criteria for patriots, Deng Xiaoping said: “Respect for their own nation, sincere support for the resumption of the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong by the motherland, not to harm the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong. As long as they have these conditions, they are patriots whether they believe in capitalism, or feudalism, or even slaveism. We do not require that they all agree with China’s socialist system, but only that they love the motherland and love Hong Kong.”
Now it has been changed to “patriots ruling Hong Kong” instead of “patriots as the main body”. And the standard of patriotism, Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office Director Xia Baolong pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party is the founder and leader of the “one country, two systems” policy. Therefore, patriotism can not oppose the creation and leadership of the Communist Party of China of one country, two systems. The party must be loved in order to love the country, and should not belong to the “somewhat right” or “middle” people.
Deng Xiaoping said that after 1997, “We can scold the Communist Party, but we are not afraid of their scolding. Because the Communist Party cannot be scolded”. Now “criminalizing speech” is no longer news in Hong Kong; He Guilan’s “not accepting restriction of freedom of speech as a condition of bail” has been praised by netizens.
Of course, the real legal basis is not what Deng Xiaoping said, but the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. The Sino-British Joint Declaration has been voided by China, and some of the provisions of the Basic Law are not interpreted according to their literal text. Articles 22, 45 and 68, for example, have either been discarded or interpreted beyond recognition.
Ma Ying-jeou is a representative figure of the older generation of the “unificationists”. Taiwan’s younger “unificationists” can be represented by Li Ao’s 29-year-old son, Li Counter-insurgency. In a recent interview with the BBC, he said his father’s last wish was, “I can’t see the reunification of China, so you have to make it happen for me.” He is influenced by his father and still supports cross-strait reunification, but he himself is no longer able to convince the Taiwanese that the Chinese authorities will keep their promise.
Li gave up Taiwan University to attend Peking University in order to “become part of the motherland. After his father’s death in 2018, most of Li Ao’s books were banned in China, selecting only his pro-unification statements and censoring his liberal writings, “How do you expect me to believe that the Communist Party will keep its promises in the event of real reunification?” “They’ll tell you a set of reasons that they’re not reneging on their promises, that it’s because you’re wrong about this and wrong about that, and that’s why we need to change. I might have believed a little bit of that sophistry in the past, but now I don’t believe it 100%. …… I think the problem is all with the Communist Party, not with the people it accuses.” This passage is worth a closer look.
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