Rejection of Hong Kong's pledge for universal suffrage says something about the political dynamics across the Taiwan Strait

- Yipei Liu    

“Democracy delayed” or “democracy denied”, that’s not the questions. Despite the massive row the State NPC’s decision to postpone any possible hope for universal suffrage until 2007 has stirred in the former British colony, the decision bears no substantial consequences to the city’s economic prosperity or social conditions. After all, Hong Kong did more than fine under British rule, during which Democracy was an almost irrelevant concept; and the current chief executive, Donald Tsang, would have been elected to office anyway, had a popular election been held in 2005.

What’s more interesting is the implicit message this decision sends out regarding the Chinese government’s plan on Taiwan, or possibly the lack of it.

Whether Ma Ying-Jeou, the KMT presidential candidate, wins the general election in March, the cross-strait relationship is destined to be as murky as it has been for the 15 years. While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) - now chaired by Frank Hsieh after a spectacular defeat of his party in the parliamentary election last Sunday - is bound to maintain its pro-independence doctrine, although in a possibly less manifested manor, Mr. Ma, in order to appeal to a growing middle-ground voters that prefer prolonged, if not indefinite, continuation of the so-called status quo, will have to retreat from his party’s pro-reunification stance inherited from its long-gone militarily ambitious past. The hope for any material move towards reunification is, hence, fading away, and the government in Beijing needs to decide how to deal with such a depressing reality.   

 What the Taiwanese concerns most about when it comes to the reunification with a now communist-ruled Mainland is the possible loss of democratic rights. Beijing’s reaction to Hong Konger’s pledge for universal suffrage is, therefore, hardly reassuring to the already sceptical Taiwanese. If the Chinese government is as sobre as I expect it to be, the signal its decision to postpone democracy in Hong Kong sends to the Taiwanese leaders is that there is no immediate agenda for reunification, the priority for now is to building an economically prosperous cross-strait relationship where the necessity of rambling about the looming “threat” of reunification is cast away, not least in the short-run. After years of trial-and-error in handling “Taiwan affairs”, Beijing should have become smart enough to understand that there is no way the next Taiwanese leader – being it Ma Ying-Jeou or Frank Hsieh – would be willingly pushing forward reunification with a country that has just denied democracy to a not-so-newly rejoined member “state”, which - to many Taiwanese – is an illustrative example of the administrative model that is likely to be applied to their island should it be formally embraced into the People’s Republic. If reunification is what Zhongnanhai had in mind, the right and almost natural step to take would be to grant Hong Kong universal suffrage bounded by a series of restrictive clauses such as central government approval of final results. After all, general election is a political game taht – as expensive as it is – the people of Hong Kong could easily afford, and their practical – as opposed to ideological - approach towards everyday business, together with high average level of education, would ensure that the flawed concept of democracy would not exert much, if any, detrimental impact on the city’s prosperous establishment.  The very fact that Beijing refrained from taking this easy option, much at the detriment of the pro-China cohort in Hong Kong’s legislature, shows that the government, despite its manifested stance, is yet to device a clear plan to integrate Taiwan into its existing system.

The leadership that rules China today is a highly practical one. It realises that China is not ready for a Democratic Taiwan, as much as Taiwan is not ready for an authoritarian China. Allowing a city with seven million people show-casing the entertaining game of popular election is one thing, having a province with the size of Belgium (and twice the population) operating a fully functioning democracy – no matter how dysfunctional it might be - is quite another. The latter is likely to lead to a new wave of demand for democracy, which the communist party cannot easily deal with without resorting to 1989 Tian’anmen type measures – something the CCP is not fond of, despite popular western beliefs. Instead of rushing into reunification that the government is still ill-prepared for, a wiser and more practical alternative is to maintain the status quo – something very vaguely defined but both parties seem to have a good understanding of. The decision on Hong Kong may not be very reassuring to the Taiwanese people about the CCP’s attitude towards democracy, but it could be quite reassuring to the forth-coming Taiwanese government about the party’s attitude towards reunification – if, of course, the both parties understand each other.