A year before Britain handed Hong Kong to China, then-President Jiang Zemin hailed the ¡°one country, two systems¡± plan for the city as a model for the country to one day unify with Taiwan.
Taiwan would get ¡°a high degree of autonomy¡± ¡ª the same pledge China used for Hong Kong ¡ª while keeping legislative and independent judicial power, and its own armed forces, according to Jiang¡¯s speech, copies of which were distributed at Hong Kong¡¯s handover center in 1997.
For Taiwan though, the proposal has never been an option. Even the Kuomintang ¡ª a vestige of the losing side in China¡¯s civil war and the main force backing eventual unification with the mainland, has rejected the model. Making Xi¡¯s task even more daunting is a drastic shift in the consensus in Taiwan against any form of integration with China, thanks to the island¡¯s growing sense of nationhood and to the Chinese Communist Party¡¯s sweeping crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.
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