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If we learned anything from mainland China’s slow-motion take over of Hong Kong, it should be that China has option other than rolling tanks in the streets. In Hong Kong it used legal measures and police action to stop protests and jail activists. Then it threatened everyone into silence and shut down independent news outlets, raiding their offices and jailing publishers. And the bottom line is that freedom from the mainland is now just a memory. Hong Kong’s oldest pro-democracy party shut down this month because talk about democracy leads to prison these days.
The Democratic Party, one of the leading voices of opposition in the semi-autonomous city for the past three decades, has started the process of dissolution following recent warnings from Chinese government officials, two of its veteran members told CNN.
“The message was that the party has to be disbanded or there will be consequences,” said one of them, Yeung Sum, a former Democratic Party chairman.
China could pursue a similar approach with Taiwan. It can’t literally roll tanks in because there’s no bridge connecting Taiwan to the mainland (it’s about 80 miles offshore), but it has been building up its coast guard fleet and could use those ships to quarantine the island.
China continues work on seizing the island by force. The recent “Strait Thunder” drills surrounded it with 38 naval ships. Yet China is also rehearsing novel, more severe “grey-zone” tactics that fall short of outright war. Top of the list are temporary quarantines and customs inspections of ships in Taiwanese waters, using China’s vastly expanded coastguard force.
China’s aim would be to undermine Taiwan’s sovereignty and sow doubt among its citizens that America would be able or willing to come to their aid in an invasion.
