Beyond Hong Kong, Watch Out For China’s Efforts To Subvert Taiwan’s Democracy

While the horror of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was memorialized in the US and elsewhere, China Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, posted on Facebook a photo of the two crumbling towers, with a text stating that ’anti-government fanatics’ in Hong Kong were planning similar terrorist attacks in the city-state. That is crude and shameless but does illustrate to what length, the Chinese propaganda system tries to control the narrative including on social media platforms. If we leave the warped upside-down propaganda universe, the reality is that pro-democracy demonstrators have been taking to the streets for over three months in Hong Kong.

These democracy activists deserve support from democratic-minded people everywhere. The response from European and American leaders so far has been meek, among others an EU statement by parting foreign policy head, Mogherini, which didn’t even dare to insert the word democracy in the declaration. In the US, President Trump has mostly carried a small stick and talked about finding a ‘humanitarian’ solution although he spoke more forcefully this week at UN.