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EDITORIAL : Hong
Kong, Macao and Taiwan
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has announced that Taiwan’s representative
offices in Hong Kong and Macao are to have their names changed to the Taipei
Economic and Cultural Office. The Taiwanese officials there are now to be
treated as diplomats. In addition, both territories are to set up Economic and
Trade Offices in Taipei by the end of the year. This is a major breakthrough in
relations between Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Now that these doors have been
opened, those to Beijing cannot be far off. However, the question remains as to
whether this development will bring cross-strait ties closer, or pull them
further apart.
Both Hong Kong and Macao have played crucial roles in the development of
cross-strait ties. They have acted as intermediaries, from being places to
gather intelligence in times of tension to playing go-between, with the opening
of the three links, for example, in periods of detente; and from the 1992 talks
between Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait chairman Wang Daohan
(汪道涵) and Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) in Hong Kong to
the secret messengers’ meetings of former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) era, in
which Hong Kong was of vital importance.
While the two territories were colonies of foreign powers, their political
orientation was controlled both by the respective colonial powers and by
Beijing. After their handover, their chief executives followed Beijing’s
dictates. Government officials preferred to maintain a certain distance between
themselves and Taiwan.
Hong Kong was quite strict in its implementation of the 1995 seven-point
statement of former Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen (錢其琛), but pretty much
disregarded the six-point clarification of China’s Taiwan policy announced by
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in 2008, so that Taiwan-Hong Kong-Macao
relations have, of late, taken a back seat to relations between Taiwan and
China.
Since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regained power, cross-strait tensions
have relaxed considerably. Activity between Beijing and Taipei has been much
higher than that between Taipei and Hong Kong or Macao. Direct links between
Taiwan and China have seen Hong Kong and Macao’s roles as business hubs
marginalized, inspiring them to take the initiative and set up official trade
offices before Beijing. They will now act as a kind of trial run for official
cross-strait offices.
The changing of the names of the trade offices will see the consolidation of the
Chung Hwa Travel Service (中華旅行社) and the Kwang Hwa Information and Culture
Center (KHICC, 光華新聞文化中心) in Hong Kong, which could lead to visa exempt travel
between the three locations.
While impressive, the relations between these three are nowhere near as
complicated as relations between China and Taiwan. Although establishing trade
offices in each other’s territories will greatly improve communication between
the two, which is good, one should bear in mind that before the UK handed
sovereignty of Hong Kong over to China, the latter established several
institutions in the territory, including Xinhua news agency and the People’s
Bank of China, which essentially became Beijing’s proxy underground government
in Hong Kong, orchestrating and carrying out Beijing’s orders and sometimes even
superseding the official territorial government.
There are considerable differences between the respective sovereign statuses of
Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the approach to democracy of the people who live
there. Taiwanese would not take too kindly to Beijing transferring its Hong Kong
model wholesale onto Taiwan. The establishment of cross-strait trade offices
before the presidential election will have a considerable impact on President Ma
Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) chances of re-election.
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