【台美日共同守護印太安全】
　　
美國、日本、台灣三國智庫共同主辦「2020台美日三邊印太安全對話」，包括蔡英文總統、美國前國務院助卿坎博(Kurt Campbell)、前國防部印太安全助理部長薛瑞福(Randall Schriver)、日本前駐美大使佐佐木賢一郎等重要人士都與會。
　　
我也參與三國國會議員的對談，與羅致政委員、陳以信委員、美國聯邦眾議員貝拉(Ami Bera)以及日本眾議員鈴木馨祐，交流2020後的印太及台海情勢與願景。
　　
結果準備厚厚一疊的英文講稿幾乎沒派上用場，講太HIGH不小心就脫稿演出....。無論如何還是提供原本的講稿跟大家參詳，一起來練習英文吧：
　　
　　　　
2020 Taiwan-US-Japan Trilateral Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue

Hello moderator, fellow panelists, I am Taiwan legislator Freddy Lim.

This year, due to the pandemic, we can only conduct this panel online. I’m still very glad to be invited to attend this event and exchange ideas with these great panelists. Here I want to share my views on today’s main topic: “Challenges and Opportunities in the Indo-Pacific Region and the Taiwan Strait in 2020 & Beyond”.

First I want to start with the conventional positioning of Taiwan under the established international order.

After WWII, the international order led by the allies dragged Taiwan into China’s civil war. Since then, Taiwan's been struggling with the “One China” dispute, unable to gain independence and world recognition like many other colonies.

Even though Taiwanese people have built an independent and democratic country after half a century of hard work, now we enjoy freedom and human rights, the international community still isolates Taiwan. One of the main reasons is obviously China.

The established international community viewed China as a huge economic opportunity, a partner that would eventually carry out political reforms and be integrated into modern international order. Under this conventional thinking, the international community is willing to help China ease and suppress many of its unpleasant problems, including the thorny "Democratic Taiwan."

This has reduced Taiwan to merely China’s “Taiwan Problem”. We’re even slandered as the “troublemaker” of the Taiwan Strait; As a result, the respect that Taiwan deserves continues to be shelved, and the active role we can play, the contributions we can make in the international community are also ignored.

However, this established international structure is now changing.

After decades of appeasement policy, and acquiring WTO membership in 2001, China’s various structural changes that the world anticipated have never taken place. On the contrary, China’s been using organized measures, such as bribing, infiltration, and hybrid-warfare, to undermine international norms. It’s worked hard to manipulate and control international organizations, in order to project its influence onto the world. These actions have been even more distinct after Xi Jinping became President of China in 2012.

Internationally, China implemented debt-trap diplomacy on many countries through the Belt and Road Initiative. It established Confucius Institutes around the world, which are basically intelligence operations in the name of culture. Chinese tech giant, Huawei also aids China’s international surveillance. Not to mention China’s relentless expansion in the South China Sea, building military bases, creating man-made islands. This year, it’s even more serious. We witnessed the long time Chinese infiltration into UN organizations. The favoritism towards China helped its cover-up, which led to the dysfunction of WHO, ultimately causing the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Domestically, the Chinese government not only failed to implement any political reforms, but it also created the “Social Credit” system with advanced technology, to surveil and control its own people; In addition, the Chinese government built the notorious “Reeducation Camps” - concentration camps in reality, in Tibet, Xingjian, where human rights conditions were already in a bad shape. Even the Hong Kong people, who were supposed to be protected by the promise of “One Country, Two Systems”, their freedom and human rights were completely destroyed by the Chinese government.

These compelling examples show that there is some serious fallacy in the conventional way of viewing China. All facts point to this: Taiwan is not the problem. China is the problem. China is the troublemaker of the Taiwan Strait. It’s the troublemaker of the Indo-Pacific region. It’s even the troublemaker of the entire world.

Under decades of collective misjudgement, China was allowed to become the most terrifying, largest digital authoritarian government in human history. It’s a new form of dictatorship. As a response, many countries have vastly changed their China policy in recent years, thus the change of international structure.

This brings me to my next point: Give Taiwan the status it deserves. Let us contribute to the international society.

In a new international structure, Taiwan shouldn’t be categorized as “China’s Taiwan Problem”. Instead, we should be one of the key countries for international cooperation, responding to the new type of dictatorship.

Taiwan has faced authoritarian China on the front line for decades. Many countries are now facing the problem of China's infiltration under its United Front programs. Taiwan started dealing with the same problems 10 to 20 years ago. We have gained a lot of experience to contribute to the international community.

Taking the COVID pandemic as an example, Taiwan has studied and analyzed the actual situation and the information provided by the Chinese government with a serious and high-vigilance attitude. Based on our experience and lessons learned from the China SARS epidemic in 2001, we decisively formed a series of epidemic preventive measures. We have handled the crisis with the principle of openness and transparency. Our people have been self-disciplined and willing to cooperate. All of this demonstrates the high level of democracy in Taiwan’s society.

After the domestic epidemic was brought under control, Taiwan has continued to share our epidemic prevention supplies and the experiences on forming epidemic prevention policies with the world.

Although Taiwan was suppressed, even excluded by China in various international organizations in the past, we’ve been doing our best to comply with the norms & regulations of international organizations. We always actively contribute every time we have the opportunity. What I want to say is, all of this proves Taiwan could be a reliable partner in the international community. We are capable of working with other countries to solve major problems. We deserve our seats and participation in international organizations.

Regarding the impact of U.S. change of administration.

Now the U. S. presidential election is over and the administration is currently under transition. Many countries, including Taiwan, are concerned about whether the new U.S. government will change its course on foreign policy, especially its China policy. However, the "Rebalance (of Asia-Pacific Region)" proposed by the Obama administration in 2011, was in fact already a strategic adjustment in response to the rise of China and possible subsequent expansion.

The Trump administration further proposed the Indo-Pacific strategy in 2017 to promote and uphold international law and regulations, aiming to ensure every country has the liberty to be free from oppression and coercion. I believe that both parties in the U.S. understand the root cause of the Indo-Pacific regional problem comes from the Chinese government. Even for the Biden administration, it will have to provide practical responses. Facing the new structure, they can’t just go back to the traditional thinking of the last century.

As for Taiwan, the pro-Taiwan acts in the U.S., such as the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018, Taiwan Travel Act, Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement, were passed with strong consensus between the Republicans and the Democrats. I believe Taiwan could be a key partner to the international community and play an active role in the free world. This isn’t just the consensus of the two parties in the U.S., but will be the consensus of all democratic countries.

In a progressive aspect, the International community can benefit from a wider recognition of Taiwan.

In recent years, the performance of Taiwanese society in terms of epidemic prevention performance, human rights, gender equality, marriage equality, and open government are actually in line with many progressive ideas and visions. The ideas and visions that many democratic countries have long supported. Therefore, I’m quite optimistic that, after 2020, Taiwan can make even greater progress, on multiple levels and in broader aspects, contributing to the international community.

Finally, I want to emphasize again that to truly resolve regional problems, we need dynamic multilateral cooperation. But this must not be a return to the conventional thinking of the past century, which was "expecting" China to abide by the international order. The outdated thinking had been proved to be a failure. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a series of Chinese infiltration and aggression after its rise in recent years, which became one of the most difficult issues in the world. I believe after 2020, U.S., Japan, and Taiwan can establish a new model of international cooperation through deeper collaboration and communication. And hopefully, this model will maximize the security of the Indo-Pacific region and promote peace, stability and development in the region.

This concludes my speech, thank you all for listening.
Lastly, I’d like to express my gratitude to the moderators, my fellow panelists, and the organizers of this event.
I wish everyone peace and good health. Thank you.

The silent revolution (Lee Yee)

Before democrats’ primaries, except for one or two Hong Kong government officials jibber-jabbering sporadically, major bureaucrats from Beijing and Hong Kong had been very reticent about it. But afterward, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government and Carrie Lam denounced in tandem that the primaries were a breach of the Basic Law, the National Security Law as well as the electoral law, yet without uttering which article of them. Why? Perhaps it was due to another wrongly projected scenario by the Chinese Communist Party. In view of the media being nonchalant about the primaries and Tai Yiuting being unconfident in drawing in one-tenth of the pro-democracy electorate(170 thousand voters), they had thought that citizens were apathetic towards the primaries. If that was what it all amounted to, there was nothing to worry about, and they would surely be glad to see it end in fiasco.

Who would have thought that as many as 610 thousand voters who had kept a low profile would have swarmed the polling stations to take the whole world aback? Though the communist China and Hong Kong hastily took remedial actions right away, it was already too late. The primaries already shocked the world.

A wise young man has called on me lately. He put forward a few questions, the first of which was: Which four among all major events in the past year including 6.9, 6.12, 6.16, 7.1, 7.21, 8.31, siege to the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University do you pick to best encapsulate the entire course of the movement?

My answer was: Being a watcher and critic, I’m far from being able to encapsulate the entire movement, but since the start of the anti-extradition movement, there have been a lot of incidents boggling my mind, or more specifically getting me awakened, while changing my perceptual knowledge thoroughly.

The first event is 6.12. Before that day, I had not believed the extradition amendment bill would be laid aside for the communist China and Hong Kong’s resolve was so decided and the pro-establishment faction, the majority in the Legislative Council, had declared support for it, not to mention the government proclaimed on the night right after the 6.9 one million people demonstration that the Second Reading debate on the bill would be resumed. I was concerned about the safety of the protesters who charged, and deemed the radical behaviors useless. Though I understood why the young people did so, I did not find the valiant attempts in the protests desirable. After 6.12, my conception has altered and the five appeals put forward since have been prevailing.

The second event is 6.28. Nothing happened in Hong Kong that day when leaders of various countries converged for G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Less than a week before, some young people had advocated crowdfunding 3 million dollars for advertising on front pages of influential newspapers in different languages all around the world. Fundraising aside, based on my half-a-century experience in news publication, it is hardly possible to pull it off. But they did it jaw-droppingly well beyond doubt. Even though the leaders of G20 did not react forthwith, the global attention being drawn to Hong Kong and the Hong Kong’s story being ushered into the international arena by the advertisement are indisputable facts. The thought-provoking courage of the young people reshaped my appraisal of the new generation of Hong Kong.

The third event is 7.21+8.31. This two-in-one incident totally transmuted my impression on Hong Kong police. Citizens come into contact with police officers more than any civil servants. The complexion of the police is the complexion of the city. When police officers become public security officers, Hong Kong becomes a place I am no longer familiar with.

The forth event is siege to the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Polytechnic University plus the District Council election. Before the District Council voting, young people had kept on charging valiantly with support from the public, and some citizens had complained about traffic inconvenience caused by the protests. When the day of election was nearing, the society was surprisingly peaceful. Would ordinary citizens, mostly self-absorbed, support the protest? In the end, the turnout and results of the election were dumb-founding. The misjudgement by communist China and Hong Kong became laughingstock. The Chinese officials in charge of Hong Kong affairs stepped down or got demoted.

Every time my mind was boggled, I came at something in one way or another and was somehow awakened through self-reflection. Looking at the primaries of democrats under the threat of the National Security Law, I realized that Hong Kongers on the whole have completely mutated in the past year. All the events that all citizens can take part have been undergoing fundamental changes. Those who keep a low profile will creep into our view to take us aback.

A silent revolution is ongoing. There is no turning back for Hong Kong. When Hong Kongers reminisce about the current “darkest hour” in future, they will find out that in fact that was the “best time”.

(Lee Yee, a prominent political commentator in Hong Kong who embarked on a career of writing and subediting in 1956, has been contributing unremittingly political commentaries to the local press.)

過去幾日，大家紛紛聚焦關注台灣大選，但既然選舉落幕，在祝賀和恭喜台灣後，那就是時候把目光放回中港政局，尤其是我相信民進黨繼續完全執政，以及香港民主派在去年11月區選大勝，定必促使國台辦、港澳辦及中聯辦等系統面對更大內部動盪。

跟大家分享一篇在團隊幫忙下，以我名義在德國世界報（Die Welt am Sonntag）雙週專欄發表的文章，提到這位曾在香港中聯辦招待韓國瑜，如今被撤換掉的王志民，在日後如何影響中共對港政策等課題。

話說回來，當去年韓國瑜到中聯辦密會王志民，誰會料到事隔不夠一年，兩人落得如此下場。

In the beginning of the year, Hong Kong-ers were told by Peking that Luo Huining, 65, has been named the head of the Liaison Office, to replace Wang Zhimin, who had held the post since 2017. It is believed that such replacement hopes to address the misjudgement Hong Kong and Chinese government have made about the movement in Hong Kong. Luo, who is known for his enforcement of the Communist Party discipline, is at the age of retirement and has no former experience in Hong Kong matters. This means he has no close ties to any sectors or camps in the political arena of Hong Kong and does not have to struggle to stay in place, which makes him the perfect candidate to carry out Peking’s tasks to restore order in Hong Kong.

The Liaison Office , full named Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong SAR is an institute of the Chinese government which reports to China’s State Council, serves as Beijing’s platform to project influence in the city. Its daily operation includes mobilising supporters to vote for pro-Peking political parties in District and Legislative Council elections, and clandestinely orchestrating electoral campaigns. They also supervise Chinese enterprises and the pro-Peking newspapers in Hong Kong and run the Communist Party cell in Hong Kong. For the past decade, its operation is referred to as “Sai Wan (the district where the Office is located) ruling Hong Kong” because it always acts beyond its jurisdiction and violates the “One Country, Two System” and the Basic Law and intervene Hong Kong government’s rule.

Similar replacement has happened in the history of Hong Kong before. In 1983, Xu Jiatun was named the director of the Hong Kong branch of the Xinhua News Agency (the official state-own news agency, the Liaison Office at the time in HK). Xu was also at the age of retirement and has no former experience in Hong Kong matters. Xu, in his memorial talked about the reason he was being placed in Hong Kong, he was told to handle the tasks of preparing for the Handover in 1997, and his role is to reflect the situation in Hong Kong truthfully because the director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office at the time had failed to do so.

Similar to 1983, it suggests that there will be drastic changes in the work of the Peking in Hong Kong. In 1983, it is for the sake of preparing for the Handover, and this time, we believe, it is for the sake of initiating change by the Chinese government itself in addressing the political turmoil that came with the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. The movement has revealed the deep-rooted unresolved problems between Hong Kong and China, there is no cure to the ideological and cultural differences the two places have. The Chinese government has found itself incompetent to restore order and stability in Hong Kong since June last year; Hong Kong-ers and the world see the reason to be the illegitimacy of a dictatorship that sparks discontent of the people; Peking itself assess it as the mistakes of policy direction and to resolve it only requires shifting into hardliner-tactics in handling Hong Kong matters. And hence, by replacing the director of Liaison Office, Peking convinces itself that enforcing the discipline of the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong will suffice in resolving the current political crisis.

It is worrying that Peking is under the illusion that merely adopting hardliner-approach would help, because the fundamental cause of the movement is not what tactics the Liaison Office undertakes, but the lack of legitimacy of the Hong Kong government. I believe adopting a stronger and more oppressive approach will only lead to more police brutality on the street, more injuries in protests and stronger opposition from Hong Kong-ers. The only cure to the situation is to listen and response to the people’s demands but not appointing new puppets in Hong Kong.