DPP’s antics reason HK has cut ties
In an attempt to make right appear wrong, Taiwan’s mainland affairs council said Beijing and Hong Kong should take full responsibility for Sunday’s recall of personnel from its representative office in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The office was established in 2010 under the framework of the Hong Kong-Taiwan Economic and Cultural Cooperation and Promotion Council, an unofficial platform for discussing cooperation between Hong Kong and Taiwan. The office, which was tasked with promoting economic, trade and cultural communications and exchanges between Hong Kong and Taiwan, was made possible after cross-Straits ties improved and an agreement on economic cooperation was signed in June 2010 in accordance with the 1992 Consensus between the island and the Chinese mainland.
However, in recent years there has been an increasing tendency for the unofficial mechanism to be usurped by Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party as a tool to both interfere in Hong Kong’s affairs and to push forward its own secessionist agenda.
This prompted the Hong Kong SAR government to temporarily suspend the mechanism and the operations of the Hong Kong Economic, Trade and Cultural Office in Taiwan in May.
It is the DPP administration on the island that bears the sole responsibility for poisoning the atmosphere of Taiwan’s economic cooperation with Hong Kong and damaging relations between the two sides. By trying to pin the blame on the Hong Kong side, the DPP is being both hypocritical and unreasonable.
As a statement released on May 21 by the HKSAR government pointed out, there has been gross interference in Hong Kong affairs on multiple occasions by the DPP authorities, which launched the “Hong Kong Aid Project” and unilaterally established the so-called Taiwan-Hong Kong Office for Exchanges and Services, offering assistance to violent protesters and people who tried to undermine Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.
Such provocative acts are in blatant violation of the intended purpose of the mechanism, which is to promote exchanges and cooperation between Hong Kong and Taiwan. The latest blame game by the DPP administration and its finger-pointing at the rightful action of the HKSAR government shows it feels no remorse for meddling in Hong Kong affairs and providing support and shelter for the rioters from Hong Kong.
The suspension of the cooperation mechanism should drive home the message that those with ill intentions toward the mainland hoping to use Hong Kong and Taiwan as leverage to fulfill their malicious goals will not work from the Hong Kong side.
Exchanges between the two Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Taiwan should be conducted on the political foundation of the one-China principle. Any attempt to sabotage the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and interfere in Hong Kong affairs is doomed to failure.