Video: Margaret Ng Says Taiwan Sees Hong Kong as a 'Cautionary Tale'
Last autumn, Hong Kong residents took to the streets by the thousands to protest the Chinese government’s restrictions on universal suffrage for the city’s chief executive. At a press event hosted by ChinaFile at Asia Society New York on February 24, lawyer, journalist, and former Hong Kong politician Margaret Ng described how critical it is for Hong Kongers to put “everything [they] have into the fight” for true democracy, even if the odds of success appear grim. “If you compromise on the rule of law, you compromise the future of the Chinese people,” she said.
In the above video clip, Ng discusses the Occupy Central protests, their influence on Taiwan, and Hong Kong’s struggles with Beijing. “Without democracy the kind of rule of law that we are used to in Hong Kong will not long endure,” Ng said, later adding that Taiwan now basically “looks at Hong Kong as a very valuable cautionary tale of what not to do.”