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China Briefing | Hong Kong’s extradition protests: one country, two systems and a vicious circle of mistrust with Beijing
- Beijing is growing impatient with Hong Kong’s seeming inability to enact the national security law required under its Basic Law
- And this summer’s mass protests have again revealed a deep schism of distrust between both sides, fuelled by misunderstanding and paranoia
Reading Time:5 minutes
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Ever since the historic protests broke out in Hong Kong this month, senior politicians in Taipei have felt a touch of schadenfreude.
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With Taiwan’s presidential election cycle heating up, the Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking re-election, and potential opposition candidate Terry Gou, one of the island’s richest men, have both pointed to Hong Kong’s mass protests as proof that Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula has failed in the city.
This sentiment has been echoed across the island and shared by some American politicians and overseas media outlets.
But what has transpired in Hong Kong has in fact shown that the formula has worked, albeit not in the way imagined by its creator, China’s late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.
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Over the past two weeks, the mass demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people from a broad political spectrum have succeeded in forcing local officials, and their political masters in Beijing, into a humiliating retreat from their plan to introduce the controversial extradition bill, which would have allowed the city to send suspects to the Chinese mainland.
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