My Take | Taiwan politics helped change Lam’s mind over extradition bill
- Leader was likely to have been made aware of Beijing’s alarm that her debacle in Hong Kong was being turned into major political capital for Tsai Ing-wen
Until recently, if you wanted to know what was really happening in Hong Kong, you needed to ask: what would Beijing do?
Now, though, Taiwan may have become another key variable in the equation. The road that led to Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s abrupt switch from taking a hard line to accommodation over the extradition bill – now suspended indefinitely – might have gone through Taipei!
While Hong Kong people hit the streets in protest against the government’s contentious bill, followed by pitched battles with police, Taiwan’s two main parties were holding their own primaries for the presidential election in January.
Incumbent Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party was widely assumed to be a spent force just a few months ago. Now, she is the front runner, not only for her own party, but against once-popular rivals from the Kuomintang. She was quick to show support for Hong Kong protesters and use the city to portray everything that was wrong with “one country two systems” – a concept that Beijing hopes to use to unify with Taiwan.
Hong Kong’s mass protests were a timely gift from heaven that contributed mightily to her unexpected lead in the latest poll.
In the primary, Tsai beat DPP rival and former premier William Lai Ching-te by 9 percentage points. The DPP poll also claimed to find that Tsai outstripped Kuomintang’s Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu and independent Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je by double-digit percentage points. However, Lai’s numbers only put him slightly ahead of Han and Ko. The results were a profound shock to Beijing.