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Allowing genuine universal suffrage in Hong Kong will help boost Taiwan-China (CNGDPYOY) relations, the islands President Ma Ying-jeou said, endorsing the pro-democracy demonstrations in the former British colony.

Now is the most appropriate time for mainland China to move toward constitutional democracy, Ma said today in a speech to mark National Day at a ceremony in front of the presidential building in Taipei.

Learning from former Chinese leader Deng Xiaopings reform pledge 30 years ago of letting some people get rich first, China can let Hong Kong people have democracy first, Ma said. Protesters blocking miles of roads in the city plan a rally tonight after Leung Chun-yings government called off talks aimed at ending the two-week standoff.

Hong Kong's Autonomy

Taipei-Beijing relations have been at their warmest in more than six decades since Ma, who took office in 2008, moved away from the independence-leaning policies of his predecessor Chen Shui-bian. The 1992 Consensus of one China, respective interpretations, has been the foundation of the past six years of peaceful cross-strait ties, he said. We have stood firm and consistent on this stance, said Ma, who is serving his second and final term ending 2016.

Ma said Taiwanese people are willing to share their experience of democracy with China, Hong Kong, and Macau. With Chinese people becoming moderately wealthy, they will wish to enjoy greater democracy and rule of law, he said.

Such a desire has never been a monopoly of the West, but is the right of all humankind, Ma said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Adela Lin in Taipei at alin95@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net Andrew Davis, Greg Ahlstrand

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Taiwan President Calls for Democracy in China, Hong Kong

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, in an unusual criticism of the Communist Party leadership in Beijing, said Friday that China should embrace democracy, and start by allowing free elections in Hong Kong.

Ma is often viewed at home as too friendly toward China, but his comments reflect local support for the tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents who launched democracy protests Sept. 27 in the semiautonomous Chinese territory, where they have shut down streets for more than a week.

Thirty years ago, when Deng Xiaoping was pushing for reform and opening up in the mainland, he famously proposed letting some people get rich first, Ma said in his speech on Taiwans National Day, referring to the economic reformist who ruled China from 1978 to 1992. So why couldnt they do the same thing in Hong Kong, and let some people go democratic first?

Now that the 1.3 billion people on the [Chinese] mainland have become moderately wealthy, they will of course wish to enjoy greater democracy and rule of law. Such a desire has never been a monopoly of the West, but is the right of all humankind, Ma said.

China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, pledging a one country, two systems form of rule that would give the world financial center a high degree of autonomy for 50 years. Authorities in Beijing have long advocated the same kind of model to reunite Taiwan with the mainland.

Taiwan, 100 miles off Chinas southeastern coast across the Taiwan Strait, is ethnically Chinese but has been self-governed since the 1940s. Beijing maintains a claim of sovereignty over the island of 23 million and has threatened to take it by force.

Mas support for Hong Kong protesters illustrates a sense of urgency among many Taiwanese to resist reintegration with China even as the two sides negotiate trade and investment deals, which some fear will allow Beijing to control the island.

Taiwanese are afraid that if you cant sustain one country, two systems in Hong Kong, then it wouldnt work here, and thats why Taiwan is paying attention, said Ku Chung-hua, 58, a standing board member of Citizen Congress Watch, a group that monitors Taiwans Legislature. The Hong Kong problem makes people here think one country, two systems is a deception.

Mas comments follow a call from Taiwans chief opposition party to allow democratic elections in Hong Kong. Since the Hong Kong demonstrations began, two rallies one exceeding 3,000 people have been held in Taipei, Taiwans capital, to show support for the protesters.

On the issue of ties with the mainland, Ma has often stood apart from the opposition and protest groups, seeking to ease tension and build economic ties with Beijing. But his governments China policy body said last week that Beijing should seek consensus with Hong Kong on how to run the territory. About 70% of Taiwanese oppose being ruled Hong Kong-style under Beijing, the agency said.

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Taiwan's leader urges China to wade into democracy, Hong Kong-first

Bob Santamaria.

Towards the end of his life, Bob Santamaria, who had been devoted to fighting communism, would wonder aloud if his mission had failed and his life been wasted. Communism, as such, was dead of course, and perhaps he deserved some slight credit. Yet many of the causes and institutions he was for - not least the Catholic church - had seemed to disintegrate in the struggle.

Perhaps it was but a self-pitying effort to get family and friends to contradict him, recite some of his victories and the importance of his influence. But no-one knew the weaknesses of their arguments, or could be more ruthless in demonstrating them than the man himself. That realism had always been part of his armour.

The Australian Communist Party was dead in the water long before the end of the Cold War in 1989. When Santamaria began his crusade against it 50 years earlier, it had been at the height of its power. The Soviet Union, whose policy it then slavishly followed, was heroically winning the war against Hitler, almost all by itself, after an embarrassing period in which it had been more or less on his side. In the earlier period, Australian communists had seemed to be consciously sabotaging the war effort but once Hitler stabbed Stalin in the back, the party was unbanned, and, in part because of publicity for the titanic struggle in Russia and Ukraine, reached its all-time peak strength of about 23,000 paid up and committed members. That was up from about 4000 two years earlier.

One did not join the communist party in the same manner as one joins Facebook. Or joins Labour or the liberals by emailing $5. One joined a movement, a struggle, a religion and a cause that would take almost all parts of one's life. One's conscience and background is closely examined by people suspicious about spies and infiltrators.

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Nor was it a matter of attending the odd meeting, like going to church on Sundays, as membership of Labor or the Liberals could be. One became committed to a life of activism, involvement, causes, front groups and regular embarrassments before workmates, neighbours, schools and family. If there's anything like it in Australia today, apart from within proto-terrorist movements, it is probably more like joining an intense live-in cult or monastic order.

Santamaria was far from the only one who saw a major threat to his religion, to Australia and to western civilisation from the growth of the ACP.

Disciplined party activists were organising themselves inside trade unions and, with classic Leninist tactics, seizing control from complacent, sometimes corrupt moderates. They were doing the same in any number of front organisations, using them, as the ASIO history puts it, to attract "well-intentioned but politically naive people" to support Soviet objectives.

Beyond well-disciplined members of the party were any numbers of bedfellows and fellow travellers broadly sympathetic to the party and its people, or otherwise having interests in common. The ACP preached a violent overthrow of capitalist democracy and its replacement by a "dictatorship of the proletariat" - led, of course, by it. But if avowedly revolutionary, much of its success in penetrating almost all parts of Australian society came from mundane identification with ordinary working class life, trade union affairs, arts, literature, culture, sports and the environment. Communism, like Catholicism and Sharia was a complete system of life, with an answer for everything.

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Did ASIO make the faintest difference?

PyroFalkon #39;s Sims 4 Socialism Challenge Day 20
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