Hong Kong has long been a unique place to the cross-strait relations. Nevertheless, its importance in the increasingly frozen cross-strait relations has significantly diminished since 2019. It was once represented as a high hope of the PRC to experiment and wishfully showcase the “One country, Two systems” to Taiwan. Hong Kong was also the birthplace of the “1992 Consensus”, when the representatives from both the SEF and the ARATS met in 1992. Moreover, Hong Kong served as a bridge to connect the straits due to its then-colonial and subsequent special administrative region’s status. For instance, before the “cross-strait charter” was introduced in the 2000s, Hong Kong had been the most crucial layover destination for travellers who travelled across the straits for decades. However, Hong Kong’s role to the cross-strait relations has massively changed since the city’s social turmoil in 2019. Analyzing the historical documents and drawing data from the semi-structured interviews with related business and cultural figures in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, this paper aims, in part, to outline the changing role of Hong Kong in the cross-strait relations; it also elaborates the impacts of Hong Kong’s diminishing role to both the Taiwan- Hong Kong relations and the cross-strait relations.

Tommy Chung-yin Kwan currently splits his time between Hong Kong and Brussels, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He works on the AspirE project which examines the decision making of aspiring (re)migrants from Asian countries to selected EU countries under the Horizon Europe funding. He received his PhD in Politics and International Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, focusing on the relationship between political parties and social movements in Taiwan. Tommy is an avid writer and a radio programme host. He comments on Taiwan and Hong Kong’s political and cultural scenes. His anthologies, Learnings from Solitude (2019), Old World in a New Day (2020) and In Retrospect (2023), are all published by the China Times Publishing in Taiwan.

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DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 2024
TIME: 18:30-20:00
LOCATION: SIN 1, at the Department for East Asian Studies/Chinese Studies, Altes AKH, Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Yard 2, Entrance 2.3