HONG KONG -- One certainty emerges amid the democratic turmoil in Taiwan and Hong Kong and amid the authoritarian turmoil in the higher reaches of the Chinese Communist Party, which is skilled at concealing its innate factionalism: The triangular relationship between China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as envisaged by former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, is no more.
In the 1980s, when Deng sought to assure Hong Kong's acceptance of reversion to Chinese sovereignty, he anticipated that relations between Beijing and Taiwan would improve. If Hong Kong successfully retained its capitalist system and lifestyle, while still becoming part of one communist-led country, then the "one country, two systems" model would also become acceptable to Taiwan as a basis for reunification.
The weakness of Deng's dream was that it failed all along to perceive the connection between capitalism and democratic freedoms. This failure has been compounded by Deng's successors. Yet initially, Deng's dream was more realistic than it appears today.