SINGAPORE -- The heavy losses suffered by proadministration and pro-Beijing parties in Hong Kong's Nov. 23 municipal elections clearly bore out a prodemocracy message.
Less than four months before the March 20 elections in Taiwan next year and amid President Chen Shui-bian's tussle with Beijing over planned constitutional reforms by 2008, China's "Hong Kong dilemma" has again assumed an important political dimension. The controversial parliamentary vote in Taipei last week also highlighted the acute seriousness of China's relations with its administrative region, as well as the island that it claims as its own.
The impressive mass protests in Hong Kong in July and the political backtracking of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa -- and Beijing -- in withdrawing the controversial security bill (particularly Article 23) brought into focus China's tenuous relations with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.