THE SECURITY DILEMMA OF TAIWAN AND THE US DUE TO THE DIMINISHING AUTHORITY IN HONG KONG AND ITS IMPACT TOWARD US-TAIWAN SECURITY COOPERATION (2019-2022)

Abstract

The recent protest in Hong Kong has put a spotlight on China’s growing aggression. Hong Kong’s higher degree of autonomy granted by the “one country, two systems” policy has increasingly been eroded and was put to an end with the passage of the National Security Law, which took away its authority and its freedoms. As a result, this crackdown sounded an alarm and created security dilemmas for Taiwan as it might be next. Indirectly, the US also formed security dilemmas fearing China’s possible military invasion on the island to forward its agenda forcefully, like its unilateral enactment of the law in Hong Kong. The common security interest then fueled the increase of US-Taiwan security cooperation. Thus, this qualitative research aims to analyze how the diminishing authority in Hong Kong generates these security dilemmas and impacts the US-Taiwan defense cooperation, using the power transition theory, the concept of security dilemma and defensive realism theory. The result of this research is that the shared background, values and political struggle between Hong Kong and Taiwan against China led Taiwan to associate itself with Hong Kong, thus creating security dilemmas for its future fate. Indirectly, it also threatens the US interest in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region in regards to its great power competition with China, hence creating mutual security concerns. Therefore, as defensive countermeasures, both Taiwan and the US is deepening their defense cooperation. It is marked by a significant increase in the US arms sales to Taiwan in 2019 to build Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, the introduction of several US Congressional Acts to grant security aids, as well as the double increase in the number of US troops’ deployment to Taiwan.