Crossroads Taiwan (Mar. 22, 2024)

Dark moments and the trajectory of history

This week I had a brief conversation with a friend of mine from Hong Kong, who was deeply involved with the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and helping with the diaspora and overseas advocacy efforts afterwards.

He was in a dark place. Distraught over the recent passing of Article 23 of the Basic Law, he asked me, “when have you felt hopeless about Taiwan?”

It was a hard question to answer, because even as Taiwan and Hong Kong are both fighting against grip of the Chinese Communist Party, there are still significant differences in the two cases. And I definitely don’t presume I can speak for Hong Kong.

For Taiwan, there had definitely been difficult, dark times. I was, of course, not around during the 228 Massacres, the 823 attempted invasion of Kinmen by Mao’s forces, or other acts of oppression further in the past. I am old enough to be around right after the 1979 Formosa Incident where pro-democracy activists were tried in a military court for sedition, or the US ending diplomatic relations with Taiwan, or the death of Cheng Nan-jung, the provocative free-speech and Taiwan independence crusader who, to avoid capture, set himself and his office ablaze in 1989; but I was too young to appreciate the significance of these events.

More recently, there was the Sunflower Movement in March 2014, which many people have talked about this past week to commemorate its 10 year anniversary. But leading up to 2014 were a series of protests against Chinese interests buying up control of Taiwan’s media and against developers’ land grabs and forcefully evicting existing residents. In 2015, there was a large scale protest by students against proposed changes to the history curriculum to teach China as “the homeland.”

That’s not to mention the ever-increasing military and political pressure Beijing puts on Taiwan, including incursions of Chinese aircraft and vessels closer and closer to Taiwan. The tone of “wolf-warrior diplomacy” (I’d like to rename it “tantrum diplomacy,” by the way) amounts to verbal abuse against an entire people….

The list goes on. I believe though, maybe for no good specific reason, that the trajectory for Taiwan bends towards the right side of history. For Hong Kong’s political future, I can see why it is hard to feel that way right now. I don’t have a good answer, at least—not yet.

Chieh-Ting Yeh