Dennis Kwok talk at Northeastern University

Dennis Kwok (郭榮鏗), who is a visiting scholar at Northeastern, participated in a conversation with Professor Mai'a Cross today entitled, "The Rise of China, the Fall of Hong Kong, and the Implications for the Taiwan Strait." In case you're not familiar with him (I wasn't), he was one of the founding members of the Civic Party in Hong Kong and was in HK's Legislative Council (LegCo, which I finally learned how to pronounce--with a soft "g") from 2012 to 2020. He was forced out of LegCo in 2020, after which he left Hong Kong. He is called a scholar in exile and says he currently has no plans to return to Hong Kong. 

He gave what I thought was a fairly modest/humble narrative of his own changing perspective on the fate of Hong Kong over the years, admitting that when he started out as a moderate democrat, he hoped, like many people, that "one country, two systems" would work for Hong Kong. Like many others, he said he didn't know quite what to make of Xi Jinping when Xi took over China--Xi's father was a reformer, so people were hopeful that he would be a reformer, too. The events of 2014-present changed Kwok's mind, and he doesn't have much optimism now for Hong Kong or for China. His only point of optimism: "I believe that authoritarianism simply doesn't work. ... Humans want to be free." 

About Taiwan, he warned, "You'd better take it seriously" when Xi indicates he won't leave the Taiwan issue to the next generation of Chinese rulers. Citing Kevin Rudd, Kwok called Taiwan "the holy grail" of CCP politics. It's Xi's political legacy. Kwok said that he has gone to many conferences and meetings where Taiwan is discussed, and the key question that no one asks is, "What do the Taiwanese people want?" They're the ones who are going to be doing the fighting. (I've seen this written a lot, like by writers like New Bloom founder Brian Hioe, but somehow hearing it said out loud 讓我紅了眼眶...) He said that the most painful lesson Hongkongers learned was through the events leading up to and including the National Security law. People should have protested 30 years ago, he said, when the British signed Hong Kong over to the PRC. You can't rely on outsiders to defend you. You have to defend yourself. This reminded me of the preface to Chen Rong-cheng's 1973 translation of Formosa Betrayed, where Chen wrote, ｢人不先自救，誰會救我？｣. The more things change, ...