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Drum Tower: Can Taiwan preserve its autonomy?
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Despite the sabre-rattling happening in the Taiwan Strait, Xi Jinping has a plan to take over Taiwan without firing a shot: “peaceful reunification”. He points to Hong Kong as a model of how it could be done.
But Hong Kong’s autonomy all but disappeared after China imposed a national-security law on the city in 2020. Today, Hong Kong is much less an advertisement and more of a cautionary tale for Taiwan.
In the final episode of our four-part series looking at the future of Taiwan, David Rennie, The Economist’s Beijing bureau chief, and Alice Su, our senior China correspondent, ask what Taiwan needs to do to protect its democracy.
They meet Kacey Wong, an artist who fled to Taiwan after witnessing Hong Kong’s loss of civil liberties. He explains what’s at stake for the island he now calls home.
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