My Take | Hong Kong dissidents unwelcome in Taiwan

The arrest of four protesters from the anti-government riots in 2019 have again shone a spotlight on Taiwan as a lousy escape route for such individuals. The self-ruled island under President Tsai Ing-wen might have cynically exploited the social unrest in Hong Kong three years ago for propaganda and electoral gains. After all, the riots helped her greatly to secure a second term in office. In practice, though, Taiwan does not welcome Hong Kong protesters, democracy fighters, dissidents or rioters, however you label them.

After 20 months of hiding, the four were taken into custody by police in Sai Kung last week while trying to get aboard a boat to sail illegally to Taiwan. Perhaps they have been shut off from news about current events by hiding too long. But even if they had managed to reach the island, their lives would not have improved much.

A plan to relax residency rules for people supposedly fleeing Hong Kong and Macau has been stalled and put on hold indefinitely in the Legislative Yuan. That was to have amended “the Regulations Governing Residency or Permanent Residency for People of the Hong Kong Area and the Macau Area”.

Now, lawmakers from Tsai’s own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have effectively killed it. Ostensibly, it was out of national security concerns. The claim was that those applying under the relaxed residency rules could be mainland Chinese spies.

Well, of course they could. Anything is possible. But given the already extensive links across the Taiwan Strait in business, investment, tourism and student exchange in recent decades, presumably there are already plenty of mainland spies operating on the island; likewise with Taiwanese spies on the mainland.