China threatens Taiwan’s toehold in HK

Bloomberg

For decades, Hong Kong served as a bridge between China and Taiwan. Now, that appears to be just one more thing that’s changing in the former British colony.
China’s insistence that Taiwanese officials as a condition of stay in Hong Kong sign a statement agreeing that both sides belong to “one China” adds pressure on Taipei to close its de facto consulate in the city. The decision not only potentially impacts millions of people who travel between the two places each year, it also chips away at the city’s role as a gateway from China to the democratic world.
The move advances two goals of President Xi Jinping: punishing Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen for her refusal to accept
the “one-China” framework and curbing perceived sources of outside interference in Hong Kong. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Hong Kong and its predecessor agency have provided Taiwan a diplomatic toehold in the city for more than five decades, outlasting Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.
“This development is a reflection of the tighter change in mainland China’s policy towards Taiwan,” said Sonny Lo, an academic and political commentator in Hong Kong. “Hong Kong is now a battleground of geopolitical struggle between the US and China on the one hand, and between the mainland and Taiwan on the other.”
While Taiwan and Hong Kong have both long been proxies for disputes between China and the West, tensions have flared as Beijing grows more confident about asserting its authority and the US attempts to check a rising rival. Tsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party views Taiwan as a sovereign nation, has courted support from US President Donald Trump while offering to help resettle Hong Kong democracy protesters fleeing across the Taiwan Strait in the wake a tough national security law approved by Xi last month.
“In the past, Hong Kong was not only a buffer for cross-strait relations, it had been a window for global countries to engage and interact with China,” Deputy DPP Secretary General Lin Fei-fan said in an interview. “But now the city may be just another Chinese city.”