Primary Taiwanese news agency Central News Agency (CNA) recently reported that the human rights organization, “Freedom House” just released the 2022 Global Freedom Report. Although global democracy has declined for 16 consecutive years, Taiwan still scored 94 points, second only to Japan in Asia. Freedom House’s 2022 Report issued a warning that global democracy has been on the decline, and that authoritarianism is increasingly likely to replace democracy and become the international standard model of national governance. Globally, Taiwan is tied for 17th place with Iceland, Estonia, Chile and Germany, which also scored 94 points. In Asia, Japan scored 96 points. The Report evaluates 210 countries and regions around the world, and uses the local people’s access to political rights and civil liberties as the evaluation indicators. This year, China maintained its score from last year, with negative 2 points for “political rights” and only 11 points for “civil liberties”, for a total of 9 points, and was once again listed as a “Not Free” country. The report pointed out that in recent years, Beijing’s authoritarian regime has become increasingly oppressive, and the Communist Party has continued to strengthen its control over all aspects of people’s lives, undermining a series of early moderate legal reforms. As for Hong Kong, which China has strongly suppressed, this year it scored 10 points in “political rights” and 33 points in “civil liberties”, a total of 43 points, a sharp drop of 9 points from last year’s 52 points. The Report indicated that today, only two out of ten people in the world live in a free country.
Source: CNA, February 25, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/202202250016.aspx