SNA (Tokyo) — This SNA Speakeasy features Brian Hioe on the theme of “Taiwan’s Response to the Hong Kong Crackdown.”

Transcript

Michael Penn: Welcome to another episode of the SNA Speakeasy. Today, we have the treat of a return appearance brought by our friend, Brian Hioe, who is the, I guess, editor of the New Bloom magazine in Taipei. He, you know, for the full introduction of who he is, please go back to one of our early Speakeasies in which he talked a little bit about his background. But basically, he is, I don’t know, very similar sort of person to I am, in terms of running a progressive news organization, in his case in Taiwan, and in my case in Japan, so he’s kind of my closest colleague in Japan, I suppose you might say. So how are you doing, Brian?

Brian Hioe: Good, good. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be back here.

Michael Penn: It’s always a pleasure to have you. Because we know we get a lot of insight from you. Today, we’re going to be talking about both Taiwan and Hong Kong, in a sense, which are two areas, which you, I know, do a lot of coverage on a pretty much daily basis. In particular, you know, recently, there’s been a lot of tragic events for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. So, and we’re going to basically talk about how Taiwan has responded to this, because there’s a relationship between the two. And rather than me explain that I’ll let Brian explain that, because he knows a lot more about it than I do. So first of all, Brian, can you kind of give us the setting? What has been happening in Hong Kong recently and what kind of significance do you put on the most recent turn of events?

Brian Hioe: That’s right. And so the situation in Hong Kong has been… inaudible… for some time. But now one has seen acceleration in the crackdown on activists and pro-democracy politicians in Hong Kong. And so on the daily now, you’re hearing about new arrests and so forth, it seems like there’s kind of no end. And so since they’re targeting both very famous individuals, for example, Joshua Wong, and other members of the Demosisto key leadership, the student group that he founded after the Umbrella Movement, now are in jail, as well as Pan-Democrats, you know, people that are elected politicians. New powers granted to the Hong Kong government, by the Chinese government, allow for invalidating members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council without actually having to go to the courts. And so this led to the resignation of all pro-democracy legislators, more or less, within the Hong Kong Legislative Council, because they knew this would be used against them. And so then after that, a lot of them have been put in jail now. Some have fled in exile abroad. And just kind of everyday, one hears about these new crackdowns. And this can be young people, people that are not even twenty, people that are not college graduates, high school students, or professionals, you know, people that are older, lawyers, doctors, professionals, you know, as I mentioned, these kind of elected politicians. And so the situation is quite bad. At the same time, there’s not as much protest, as one saw last year. One factor for this is because of just Covid-19, the fact that you can’t really go out and protest because you will spread the disease. But also just the fact that there has been exhaustion that has been kind of setting into the movement for some time. You can only keep up this kind of level of activity for such a while. And then you have to also retreat for a while. And as we’re in this kind of retreat period, we’re also just seeing the kind of strengthening of the crackdown by the Hong Kong police forces against pro-democracy activists, and doesn’t seem like this will let up anytime soon.

Michael Penn: You know, one thing which struck me recently is that if you look at where the most recent protest movement began, I guess about a year and a half ago now was it, when it launched, do you remember when exactly it launched this most recent movement?

Brian Hioe: It’s just summer, I can’t believe it’s so long now, summer 2019. So it’s been literally like a year and a half, more or less. And then activity continued, and then we had the start of the pandemic, and it’s been like one year, and so forth. But, activity was probably highest within the mid- to late summer, I think 2019, heated events, attempted occupation on the Hong Kong Legislative Council happened in June and July, and then that kind of thing.

Michael Penn: So the point I wanted to make on this is that, you know, I believe it started, essentially, with the extradition bill, which, you know, there was concern that people in Hong Kong could be sent to Chinese courts, if the government let that happen. And from that point, from where things were in the summer of 2019, it seems like the situation has quickly deteriorated. Not only did they, the pro-democracy movement, not win that fight, but in a sense the pegs got put back farther and farther and farther. What’s your feeling about this? I mean, in some ways, was the pro-democracy protest a strategic mistake?

Brian Hioe: Absolutely. And so the protests were originally sparked by the extradition bill that allowed for Hong Kong activists to be deported to China to face charges. And so it was thought this would be used as a means of political persecution. This bill actually originated because there was a criminal case in Taiwan, in which a Hong Kong man in his like, he was like 19, murdered his girlfriend who was like 20 in Taiwan. There’s no way to extradite them to Taiwan to face charges for murder, because Taiwan and Hong Kong did not have an extradition agreement. So to fill, this kind of stop gap, the Hong Kong government proposed having a kind of more formal extradition process. But this was also allowed for deportations to China. And here is where the problem originates. But what’s interesting is that in the past year, that one has just seen that this, scope of this bill is far superseded. For example, with cases such as the Hong Kong 12, which were Hongkongers that tried to flee to Taiwan by speedboat, and they were captured by Chinese Coast Guard and then held within China in Shenzhen. This is precisely what people feared. And then with the passage of the kind of national security legislation in the last day of June last year, this would also criminalize sedition, and this was passed by the Chinese government in a way that just kind of bypassed the legislature in Hong Kong. You don’t even have to go through the Hong Kong kind of jurisdictional system, or the legislative system in order to do this. And so just the kind of thing that people have feared, has come to pass, it’s actually just escalated to a whole degree of severity. And so it’s kind of interesting, actually. But despite the fact that things are so much worse, one does not see the kind of same protests that one had a year and a half ago. I think part of it is because of fear, but also Covid, and burnout, and all these kind of other factors. But just the situation seems to get worse and worse and worse. And just, you know, I think also the police right now with this current crackdown, with the new scope of their powers that they have with the security law, they’re trying to see how far they can go, just how much they can actually get away with currently.

Michael Penn: Putting aside the protest movement, let’s say, you know, up until the protest movement began looking a little bit more at history here, what is the relationship between contemporary Taiwan, let’s say under the DPP government, the current government in Taiwan, and generally democratic procedures in Hong Kong, the protest movements of past years in Hong Kong, is there a relationship? Is there a sense of feeling or kinship between these two groups? What was the general situation there before all these events happened?

Brian Hioe: Absolutely. So I think Taiwan and Hong Kong have long held this kind of sense of kinship, because of the fact they both face the threat of China, as a threat to democratic freedoms and that kind of thing. And so a lot of ties actually between, let’s say, Taiwanese activists that were involved in the 2014 Sunflower event, which is also about China’s influence over Taiwan, and the Umbrella Movement, which is, we know, the kind of predecessor movement to the current set of protests that occurred last year, year and a half, is that they actually knew each other going way back. So before any of them were famous, for example, leaders of the Umbrella Movement, such as Joshua Wong, or Lin Fei-fan or Chen Wei-Ting, like the leaders of the Sunflower Movement, they knew each other as activists, just because there are only so many people working on these kind of issues. And then in terms of, let’s say, Pan-Democratic politicians that are in the Legislative Council, some of them do know their DPP counterparts. The DPP is the current ruling party in Taiwan, it is a center-left party, and it is the party that leans towards Taiwanese independence or preserving Taiwan’s autonomy. And so there’s kind of a sense of cultural connection in terms of that. And then also, just a lot of young people, kind of, you know, just they grew up consuming media, a lot of young people grew up watching Hong Kong movies and listening to Cantopop and that kind of thing. And vice versa, for Hong Kong to Taiwan, just watching Taiwanese movies, listening to Taiwanese pop stars and that kind of thing. So there’s this kind of sense of cultural connection, but then in regards of the threat of China. What’s interesting is that, you know, Hong Kong comes up as an issue a lot in Taiwan, just as a way to kind of raise fears about China that this is what Taiwan can become, if, you know, Taiwan were to actually fall to Chinese control. And so this is something that DPP has leverage on for political purposes. For example, in 2020, presidential campaigning, this was used by Tsai to kind of just say, well, if you vote for the KMT, the pro-China party, the pro-unification party, this is what you’re going to get. And this is used as a way to kind of bolster support, kind of play up this China factor, the China card you could say, but also, you know, maybe in some ways, to avoid policy. And this kind of brings us to some of the issues regarding Hong Kong asylum seekers in Taiwan, for example. Just that there have not been a lot of measures to help them. But there’s been a lot of talk of Hong Kong, in a way that this has been used for political campaigning, but without concrete measures to help anybody.

Michael Penn: In the same sense, what is the general attitude before the protest movement of the other side of the political spectrum in Taiwan? The Chinese Nationalist Party, or the KMT, what kind of relationship or feelings do they have towards Hong Kong?

Brian Hioe: Yeah, it’s actually kind of interesting, because at this point, even the KMT has to make some noises about that, you know, Hong Kong, and one country two systems is a bad system, that this is something that’s dangerous, that Taiwan should not pursue this. And so the KMT is the pro-China party, but they kind of have to try to distance themselves from Hong Kong. And so the thing is they are the pro-China party, they identify very strongly with China, and at the end of the day, they do hope for Taiwan to become unified with China. And so they’re kind of walking the tightrope of this contradiction. In 2020, for example, the KMT presidential candidate, Han Kuo-yu, he actually visited Hong Kong and signed trade agreements with Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong for the city of Kaohsiung, which she is the mayor of. And so he did this, and this was seen as signaling that, well, if I’m elected president, I can conduct these trade deals with China, I can cause Taiwan to have better economic relations with China, because of my political views on China, that China, the Chinese government is willing to do business with me because of that, and this will economically benefit Taiwan. But then, you know, once these protests start happening, then he had to distance himself from that claiming that Carrie Lam is an autocrat, that she is authoritarian, that one country two systems’ is not something he wants to see in Taiwan, that’s bad. And the KMT, you know, has this formula, it’s referred to as the 1992 Consensus, it states that there’s one China, but two interpretations of that between Taiwan and China. And this is very similar to one country, two systems’ the notion that you know, you have one China but two systems of government. The notion of one country, two systems originally formulated by the Chinese government as a way to kind of win Taiwan into the fold. But then, you know, the KMT now is trying to distinguish between the 1992 Consensus, this notion that there is one China but two interpretations of that China, and one country two systems. And so this is actually just very hard to square because they are effectively very similar political formulas. And so this is the kind of contradiction that the KMT is trying to square and so…inaudible…make noises, but also just they are still trying to push Taiwan close to China.

Michael Penn: Okay, moving on to what may be the most important question, and the central question of this talk today, with a government in power in Taiwan, which is generally sympathetic to the Hong Kong protests movement, feels kinship with the Hong Kong protests movement, to what extent have they not just talk the talk, but walk the walk during the last year and a half?

Brian Hioe: Yeah, that’s a very difficult thing, actually, because there has been a lot of talk of this, but the government has not really fulfilled these measures. For example, because there’s a lot of demands from the Taiwanese people to assist Hongkongers, there’s pressure, for example, the Sunflower Movement activists that are now part of the DPP, but know these kind of Hong Kong activists going way back, such as you know Lin Fei-fan, the Sunflower Movement student leader who is now the Deputy Secretary-General of the DPP. There was measures passed, there was a new office set up to help Hongkongers, but this was actually more to help people seeking residency in Taiwan to study, employment, or investment. And there was actually provisions within that office, that’s supposed to also help asylum seekers, but there have been cases of, for example, asylum seekers turned away under the auspices of Covid-19, and then arrested in Hong Kong. This happened to Tony Chung who was like 19, the convenor of Studentlocalism, which is kind of, one of these younger localist activist groups. And there also was the case that I mentioned of the Hong Kong 12, that tried to flee to Taiwan by speedboat, but were intercepted by the Chinese Coast Guard, and then were imprisoned in China. And the Taiwanese government just did not really say anything about it, they did not really condemn this, they really tried to downplay the possibility of offering asylum to Hong Kong people now, because they’re afraid of too many people coming over. And then in the public discourse, their periodic fears are, for example, Chinese spies mixing in with Hongkongers, and that sort of thing. And you see that whenever you have kind of asylum cases, there was accusation that maybe they’ll be spies mixing in there. And also there was recently a case which actually did not get really widely reported on. But there were rumors for months and months and months that the Tai administration was holding five Hongkongers that came to Taiwan by speedboat, or some kind of boat, seeking asylum and just holding them on a base in Kaohsiung military base, Kaohsiung is the southern port city of Taiwan, the major port of Taiwan, and just not allowing them access to the outside world, not allowing them access to their family, their lawyers, or human rights organizations or whatever. And this kind of broke out into the open, some people did not believe it, because one reporter who advised them on coming to Taiwan kind of went public with it. And then, you know, months later, finally, the news was kind, of became confirmed, that they actually were there, it is thought now they’re currently in the US. It is known that five Hongkongers are currently in the US, but they originally came to Taiwan, and it’s thought that they were that five, and so the government’s trying to keep quiet on it. And so it’s a kind of double bind, I think, in the sense that the government wanted to leverage on the issue of Hong Kong, for political purposes, did not actually want to do too much, and was afraid of an influx of Hongkongers coming in seeking asylum, because this could potentially cause disruptions. It’s also possible China could retaliate, for example, against Taiwanese citizens in China, you know, arresting them, detaining them, which has happened before and that kind of thing. And so, the government has also just tried to steer Hongkongers more towards employment, education or investment, and so residency is up by 40% compared to last year of Hongkongers in Taiwan. You have Hongkongers trying to start businesses now, or seek higher education and that kind of thing. But they’re also sometimes denied on Covid auspices. And also, I think one of the big challenges that in addition to the fact that the government doesn’t really want to follow through with its promises, just to benefit from Hong Kong …inaudible… in this way, they also have a lot of bureaucratic infighting between government bureaus. It seems that the central government cannot collaborate with the National Immigration Agency, which handles immigration, and as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There’s this kind of this three-way deadlock because of bureaucratic infighting about policy about what to do with Hongkongers. And that’s proven another challenge, as with a lot of governments, I mean, I think also is true of Japan, there’s a lot of bureaucracy in Chinese government and just having these kind of cross ministerial, interagency cooperation is just very difficult.

Michael Penn: Can you give us kind of a profile of what the Hongkonger community in Taiwan is like? How big is it? What kind of businesses or what are they doing? And how much has that changed over the past year and a half?

Brian Hioe: Yeah, so one sees a lot of new restaurants opening up, and sometimes this has been as a way of allowing Hongkongers to come to Taiwan. Just because you can secure residency that way, the most famous is Aegis, which is a restaurant and a store selling protest related merchandise that was founded as a way in order to allow Hongkongers to have work visas in Taiwan. And these are mostly young Hongkongers, but they’re assisted by kind of older people and professionals, lawyers who have resources to do this kind of thing. And there’s kind of other establishments that have opened up in this way. For example …inaudible… they ran a bookstore in Hong Kong that published books critical to the Chinese government, though who were kidnapped from within Hong Kong, or within China, or within Thailand, actually, to face charges in China related to their publishing work.The last one, and the only one of them which remained free is in Taiwan, he started a new version of his bookstore as a way to stay here. And there’s also another bookstore that was started by Hongkongers a way to stay here. You know, people that kind of start businesses, they’re usually older and more established, as you might imagine that have the capital to do that. There are people trying to secure study here now. There are provisions offered by universities, for example, to allow Hongkongers to take classes here, but it’s only kind of auditing classes, it was not for credit, and that kind of thing. But some people did come over using that. In terms of the overall number or the demographics, that’s not very clear. And I think it’s something the government really kind of maybe wants to keep opaque. It’s not very clear how many Hongkongers have fled to Taiwan. After all this has happened, though, it’s probably in the hundreds or maybe more, it can’t be that large, because, you know, this would become very visible. Now proposals to kind of create, you know, let’s say, a village or land of Hongkongers to stay on. So at the same time, you know, it’s true that that would maybe just open them up to targeting by pro-China forces. There have been cases of Hongkongers in Taiwan being targeted by pro-China groups in Taiwan. Yeah, it doesn’t seem very clear, actually. The people that are more visible, are these people that have opened establishments, or younger student activists. For example, there are a few Hong Kong student groups in Taiwan actually, and you know, they’re active and do activities, exhibitions or public events, or tabling that kind of thing. But, yeah, so the overall statistics are not not that clear.

Michael Penn: We talked a little bit about the KMT position on the Hong Kong protesters and the government’s position. Now, with some of these protesters coming to Taiwan and others maybe wanting to come to Taiwan, what’s kind of the general public attitude of the more sort of apolitical average citizen? You know, essentially, what kind of reception are these people receiving in Taiwan?

Brian Hioe: Yeah, I think they’re pretty open to Hongkongers coming to Taiwan. But you know, there’s the kind of backlash from pro-China groups. And so there was an incident with Aegis, the restaurant I mentioned that was opened to help Hongkongers stay in Taiwan. There was an incident which three men threw chicken feces at the restaurant, and they had to close for several weeks to clean up and that kind of thing. In the past, there were incidents in which, for example, Joshua Wong or Nathan Law, these younger pro-democracy activists were targeted, for example, by pro-China gangsters, they were actually attacked at the airport and that sort of thing. And so, there are those kind of incidents. And that’s still a minority of people. But it does happen. And so I think the majority of society is more accommodating. But at the same time, you know, as I mentioned, this, when you look at the government response, the government has not actually been all that great in terms of offering measures for people to stay here or have security here or that kind of thing. It’s also kind of alarming sometimes too, because, you know, Simon Cheng, who’s a Hongkonger, that worked for the British Consulate and was then kidnapped, he went to Shenzhen for business trips, and he was detained all the way back to Hong Kong. And was imprisoned for a while, he later fled to Taiwan, and then actually he reported being followed by men actually just, you know, unknown individuals who are out there just to track him, probably ordered to do so by the CCP and that sort of thing. And just, you know, it didn’t seem like there’s a lot of coordination regarding the police and how to protect him and and that sort of thing. So I think it’s actually just one of those things. I think that it’s still a very small, very small minority that would target Hongkongers in this way, but they do exist and they are active social forces in that way.

Michael Penn: And are they native Taiwanese, you think, or are they put up to it by the mainland government?

Brian Hioe: It’s actually very hard to say because it could be both. You know, there are Chinese people living in Taiwan, some, you know, mainland spouses and that sort of thing. But there also are Taiwanese that are just born and raised here that are loyal to China, and they will actually carry out what the CCP orders them to do. And at the same time, it could also just not to be ordering them to do something, they might just themselves have pro-China views, and as a result, they do this on their own. So it’s kind of very hard to sort out, I mean, some of these pro-China, organized crime groups do have connections with the Chinese government, they do actually take orders directly from Chinese governments. I mean, that’s known, but at the same time, it could be that they’re motivated to do so on their own. And so it’s very hard to have any kind of smoking gun, establishing connection, actually, between the Chinese government and these pro-China groups, they could just be motivated to do so by their own ideology. But it’s also known that there are these connections. Yeah.

Michael Penn: Well, it seems to me that, strategically speaking, you know, for the future of a democratic Taiwan, the fall in a sense of democracy or democratic procedures in Hong Kong must be a huge psychological blow, because it kind of means that Taiwan becomes alone in a sense as a bastion of democracy within the mainland Chinese world. How does that affect hitting the country?

Brian Hioe: Yeah, it’s something that the Tsai administration I think plays up for soft power purposes, like, you know, we’re the last stand or last bastion of democracy in the Chinese speaking world and that sort of thing. But just then, you know, it is also true that I think that I would just say Hong Kong has never been democratic, actually, I mean, just under the British, there’s some democracy introduced near the tail end of their rule, because of the fact that, you know, as they’re withdrawing, this is also right when Tiananmen Square happens, and so you have to kind of introduce some democratic measures. Otherwise, it looks like you’re just throwing these people to autocratic, democratic, you know, this authoritarian China. But, you know, for example, just with the Hong Kong, legislature, there are functional constituencies, quote unquote, which directly allow corporate interests a seat at government, you know, just different corporate sectors can just directly vote in government. It is actually just one of the most undemocratic systems in the world. And it’s actually, because of pro-business interests wing towards the pro-China alignment, you know, China’s always a larger market, this has also served as a way for China to maintain control of the legislature. So I mean, just when you actually look at it like that, but then, you know, I think in terms of Taiwan, then there’s the sense sometimes of just, you know, we’re the last ones left, so actually, that kind of amplifies the desire to cut ties with Hong Kong, the desire, just to say that, oh, well, you know, they already lost to China, so all we can do is cut our losses. And I think that sometimes the DPP, as the ruling party will kind of play this up, so they can justify their own inaction, like there’s nothing we can do, the best thing you can do for Hong Kong is just to maintain our own democracy. And so you have that kind of rhetoric floating around.

Michael Penn: Has it affected at all, you know, Taiwan’s internal debates about how strongly Taiwan should assert an independent position, or how strongly it should try to strengthen its democratic roots?

Brian Hioe: Yeah, I think so. I mean, again, like it gets played out for electoral purposes, like, you know, vote for the KMT, then Taiwan will become something like Hong Kong and that sort of thing. So you do have that kind of rhetoric. But I think that just in terms of Taiwan’s democracy, the emphasis is on maintaining Taiwanese democracy not in helping outsiders. And so sometimes just this kind of privileged position of Taiwan, then that gets passed over, I think of this kind of rhetoric or this kind of discourse. But also, it doesn’t surprise me because I think just historically, the Taiwanese government has had a very poor record on asylum seekers.

Michael Penn: And my last question is, is there something about this issue, which I should have asked you about, but which I haven’t, that you’d like to comment on before we move to our patron Q&A?

Brian Hioe: Not particularly I mean, that was very thorough, that covered all the bases. I felt like maybe I’m missing something.

Michael Penn: All right, well, we’ve covered all the bases, we’ve covered all the bases, which means that we move to the Q&A session.

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