Is freedom possible if Beijing takes over

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) was due to be released in January; on Thursday, a Hong Kong court sentenced him to 10 years in prison, to be served after his current term. Wong has already spent nearly six years behind bars. He could be 40 before he goes home.

Wong pleaded guilty to conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the National Security Law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong. Prosecutors said he worked with other activists to seek foreign sanctions against the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities.

We can debate whether his tactics were wise. There is far less room to argue that advocating warrants taking another decade of a young man’s life.

For Taiwan, Wong’s sentence is another warning, following the cases of Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英) and democracy advocate Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤). A newspaper publisher, a human rights lawyer who helped keep the memory of June 4 alive and a former student leader each exercised a different civic freedom.

Their cases show how far the authorities can reach into ordinary life once they have the power to treat dissent as a national security threat.

In Taiwan, we still debate unification as though it were a policy we could consider. If Beijing took control, could anyone campaign to reverse the decision? Could an editor publish their argument? Could citizens appeal to other democracies without facing prosecution?

Imagine that a year after unification, a government directive costs you your livelihood, the newspaper you trust is shut down or your child is arrested for organizing a protest. Could you say publicly that unification had been a mistake? Could you organize with others who agreed?

Those who say it would never be that bad should look again at Hong Kong. The territory was promised a high degree of autonomy, an independent judiciary and the preservation of its way of life for 50 years. Anyone asking Taiwan to accept similar guarantees should explain who would enforce them if Beijing decided that honoring them threatened its hold on power.

Taiwan could fare even worse. It has its own armed forces, an elected government and a civil society accustomed to challenging those in power. If Beijing took control by force, those who had defended Taiwan or sought help abroad could face reprisals.

Even if control passed to Beijing through a political agreement, many Taiwanese would continue to oppose it. How Beijing treats those people would tell us far more about its intentions than the welcome it gives supporters of unification today.

Those who oppose unification should take Wong’s sentence as a reason to defend Taiwan’s democratic “status quo” with greater urgency. That means strengthening our defenses and talking plainly with our families, neighbors and colleagues about what is at stake.

We can disagree about who should govern Taiwan and still insist that Taiwanese voters must retain the power to decide. That power is easy to take for granted when we exercise it regularly. Once surrendered, it would be far harder to recover.

As someone from Hong Kong, I find myself thinking about the ordinary things Wong should have been able to look forward to in January. A meal at home. Time with his parents. The chance, at 30, to decide what to do with the rest of his life. A court has put those things almost another decade out of reach.

John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.