Hong Kong showed China is a threat to democracy. Now Europe must defend Taiwan | Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Hong Kong's administration has backed down over the controversial extradition bill, but the canary in the coalmine of China's tacit acceptance of democracy is already dead.
Under China's "one country, two systems" model, Hong Kong was given the guarantee that the freedoms of its citizens would be preserved and respected. Meanwhile, for a long time in the west, the consensus was that, as its economy grew, China would start to look more like Hong Kong. Regrettably, in recent years the opposite has happened and Hong Kong looks more like China by the year. Perhaps we were naive to believe that this erosion of Hong Kong's democracy was not inevitable. Beijing makes no secret of its view that democracy and Chinese civilisation are incompatible. The protesters in the streets of Hong Kong would beg to differ, and I hope they succeed through peaceful means.
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