The catastrophic collapse of the barrier lake in Hualien, Taiwan, was a disaster. On the surface, it looked like a natural event. But let's be clear: it was not. This was an entirely man-made tragedy, a textbook case of indecision and a complete failure to act.
When Super Typhoon Ragasa slammed into Asia, Taiwan bore the brunt of the damage. Fifteen people died, most of them in Guangfu Township in Hualien. Why? A local barrier lake couldn't withstand the hurricane-force rains and collapsed, unleashing a torrent of water that flooded the township. Many residents were trapped in their homes; a number of them never made it out alive.
A Ticking Time Bomb Ignored
The story of the Mataian barrier lake begins with the massive earthquake that struck Taiwan on April 3 last year. That quake caused landslides and destabilized soil and rock across Hualien. Fast forward to this July, the remnants of Typhoon Wipha made it even worse by dumping torrential rain on the region.
This triggered another huge collapse in the forests upstream of the Mataian River. By July 21, a 200-meter-high barrier dam had formed, blocking the river and creating a gigantic basin on the mountainside. This wasn't just a puddle; it was a ticking time bomb holding a reservoir's worth of water—a staggering 91 million cubic meters at full capacity.
Dealing with a natural hazard of this scale was obviously too much for the Hualien County Government alone. So, after the barrier lake formed, Taiwan's agricultural department stepped in, holding meeting after meeting with other agencies. They floated several ideas to release the water—digging to lower the dam's crest, blasting it open, siphoning the water—but shot down every single one as "unworkable." Stuck in a loop of indecision, they did nothing.
And so, when Typhoon Ragasa hit, the inevitable happened. Heavy rain poured again into the already full lake. And the results: the dam burst, sending a tsunami-like wall of water surging downstream and devastating Guangfu Township.
Global Examples of Decisive Action
As the Taiwanese Facebook account "SpecialForceDB" pointed out, there are plenty of examples from around the world showing how this kind of crisis should be handled.
Take the United States, for example. Back in August 1959, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Montana triggered a massive landslide that dammed the Madison River, creating a barrier lake. The US Army Corps of Engineers knew explosives were too risky; the dam was too large and the geology too unstable. A blast could cause an even bigger, uncontrolled flood.
Instead, they chose the slower but safer route: mechanical excavation. It took them a month, but they successfully carved a 15-meter-deep, 76-meter-wide spillway to safely release the water.
Then there's the case from Tajikistan in Central Asia. In April 1964, a huge landslide in the Zarafshan River valley created a massive barrier lake with a dam up to 220 meters high. If that dam had burst, the historic city of Samarkand and its hundreds of thousands of residents would have been wiped out.
Fortunately, Tajikistan was part of the Soviet Union back then, and Moscow acted decisively. The Soviet government combined blasting with mechanical digging, using 250 tons of explosives to clear debris and carve a 40-50 meter deep channel. This controlled release averted a catastrophe.
And of course, we have the example from Wenchuan, Sichuan, in May 2008. A powerful earthquake created 257 barrier lakes all at once, with the largest—Tangjiashan—holding a horrific 250 million cubic meters of water and threatening over a million people in cities downstream.
The Chinese government had to act fast, and it did. It deployed military and engineering teams who relied mainly on heavy machinery for excavation, using small, targeted blasts only to clear stubborn rock. To get the equipment there, China used Mi-26 heavy-lift helicopters to fly in 80 bulldozers and excavators. They carved a massive spillway hundreds of meters long, and by June 10, the water was being safely discharged, ending the crisis before it could erupt.
These three examples from the US, the Soviet Union, and China provide a clear playbook. If the geology is stable, you can use large-scale blasting. If it's unstable, you use heavy machinery to dig. And if you can't get heavy machinery to the site, you combine small-scale blasting with manual labor. The solutions are all there.
Excuses, Inaction, and Deadly Consequences
Sure, dealing with the Mataian barrier lake was difficult. It was in a remote area with no roads, so getting heavy machinery there wasn't easy. But the lake formed in July—they had two full months to act. If a decision had been made swiftly, Taiwan could have borrowed heavy-lift helicopters from mainland China or elsewhere to fly in the equipment, just like China did in Wenchuan.
Let’s compare: mainland China took just 29 days to resolve the Tangjiashan crisis, a lake nearly three times larger than Mataian. Taiwan, on the other hand, dithered for two months and three days and accomplished nothing.
And if all else failed? If their high-level meetings produced nothing? They could have done the simplest thing of all: send in the troops. Taiwan has 189,000 active-duty soldiers. They could have dug that spillway by hand. But even that was too much to ask. Instead, with a super typhoon bearing down, the authorities—seemingly oblivious—failed to even order an evacuation of Guangfu Township.
This wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made catastrophe, born from incompetence. What else could you possibly call it?
Politics Over People
The Taiwanese authorities were paralyzed by indecision, shooting down every proposed solution while offering no alternatives of their own. Politics was clearly at play. Hualien County is run by the KMT, and while the ruling DPP government might not have intentionally blocked efforts, they certainly didn't make it a priority.
The result? The Executive Yuan let its departments drag their feet until it was too late. This political infighting cost the residents of Guangfu Township their lives. For all of Taiwan's boasting about its "advanced" system, the disastrous results of its governance speak for themselves.
Lo Wing-hung
Bastille Commentary
** The blog article is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the position of our company. **
Ignorance is not an alibi you can pull out after breaking the law. The maxim that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” matters even more when national security is at stake, because those who gamble on “not knowing” usually do so after reading the headlines and deciding to ignore them.
On Monday (24 November), the Secretary for Security exercised section 60(1) of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance and issued an order proposing to prohibit the operation of the “Hong Kong Parliament” and the “Hong Kong Democratic Independence Union” in Hong Kong, with separate written notices sent to both groups as required by the statute.
According to the Security Bureau’s explanation, these two organisations have an openly declared aim of subverting state power: they push “self‑determination”, talk about drafting a separate “constitution” for Hong Kong, and seek to overturn or undermine the basic system of the People’s Republic of China as laid down in the PRC Constitution, including the organs of state power of both the Central Authorities and the HKSAR.
Before any final prohibition order is made, the two organisations have been given the statutory chance to make representations, and only after considering these will the Bureau issue its final decision, in line with the procedural safeguards spelled out in section 60.
Who Built This “Parliament”?
Two fugitives wanted by the Hong Kong Police, Elmer Yuen and Victor Ho, set up the so‑called “Hong Kong Parliament” Electoral Organizing Committee in Canada on 27 July 2022, marketing it as a “parliament of Hong Kong people” with the explicit goal of pushing Hong Kong “independence”.
From February to May this year, this committee staged what it called “parliamentary elections” and selected 15 so‑called “members of parliament”, a made‑for‑camera exercise designed to dress up a separatist political project as if it were some kind of alternative legislature.
Another wanted exile, Keung Ka‑wai, created the “Hong Kong Democratic Independence Union”, which likewise openly advocates Hong Kong “independence” and feeds into the same overseas network challenging China’s sovereignty over the city.
Seven members of this group announced early this year that they would stand in the “Hong Kong Parliament” Electoral Organizing Committee elections and called on the public to vote.
Debunking The “No Operation In Hong Kong” Myth
After the Security Bureau moved to prohibit these two organisations from operating in Hong Kong, online critics immediately jumped in, claiming that the groups do not actually operate here and that the Secretary for Security’s move is therefore pointless – a claim that collapses the moment you read the Ordinance and the facts in existing cases.
Such arguments are textbook examples of “legal illiteracy”. By invoking the National Security Ordinance to prohibit these organisations, the first concrete effect is that every part of their operation in Hong Kong instantly becomes illegal.
Before any prohibition order, if these organisations carried out activities in Hong Kong, the Government had to analyse their conduct under both the Hong Kong National Security Law and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance to see whether particular acts crossed into defined offences, which made enforcement slower and more complex.
Take a simple example. If some members of such an organisation – who are not themselves wanted persons – came to Hong Kong and ran a “how to invest in virtual currencies” event, using it as a recruitment tool and then gradually radicalising participants into anti‑government activists, the crypto‑investment seminar, viewed in isolation, would not obviously be unlawful.
But once the organisations are expressly designated as prohibited, every activity in Hong Kong undertaken in their name becomes unlawful by definition, closing off the tactic of hiding political mobilisation behind seemingly neutral subjects.
The second major effect is that section 62 of the National Security Ordinance criminalises participation in the activities of a prohibited organisation.
Under section 62, once an organisation is designated as prohibited, anyone who serves as an officer, claims to be an officer, or manages the organisation commits an offence and faces up to a HK$1 million fine and 14 years’ imprisonment on conviction.
Even an ordinary member who participates in the organisation’s activities or assemblies, or who pays money to it or provides other forms of assistance, also breaks the law and risks, upon conviction, up to HK$250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison.
From Grey Area To Clear Line
Think about how this worked in the past. When these organisations tried to recruit in Hong Kong, there was a grey area over whether ordinary participants were committing any offence, and prosecutors had to prove that participants knew the organisation was engaging in activities to subvert the government or split the country before laying the related charges or relying on the lesser “aiding and abetting” route.
Now that these two organisations are expressly designated as illegal, prosecution becomes far more straightforward: simply becoming a member already constitutes an offence, and anyone claiming to be an officer risks a heavy sentence of up to 14 years in jail.
Since the Secretary for Security has publicly named these organisations and moved to ban their operation in Hong Kong, defendants can no longer credibly argue that they “did not understand” the nature of the groups or pretend they thought they were just joining some harmless civic club.
The Bettie Lan Wake‑Up Call
There is already a concrete case connected to these illegal organisations. Court records show that one of the wanted persons, Lam Chin‑gan (Tony Lam), instructed his former girlfriend, Bettie Lan Fei, to record promotional videos for the “Hong Kong Parliament” in Canada between March and May this year and use social media to urge the public to join the so‑called “Hong Kong Parliament” vote. When Lan later returned to Hong Kong, she was arrested and charged with one count of doing an act with seditious intention under the National Security Ordinance.
Lan eventually pleaded guilty, calling herself naïve and saying she only offended because she was incited by her ex‑boyfriend.
When passing sentence on 13 November, Chief Magistrate Victor So Wai‑tak stressed that the defendant had clearly supported the “Hong Kong Parliament” as a so‑called “overseas regime”, spreading slanders against China internationally, seriously misleading overseas audiences and promoting extremist ideas – aggravating factors that justified adding two months and jailing her for one year.
Lan’s case shows the real cost of ignorance. For each promotional video, she took 100 Canadian dollars; in exchange, she now has to spend a year in custody and carry a criminal record tied to national security‑related sedition.
At the same time, her case highlights that while her openly seditious videos clearly satisfied the offence of acts with seditious intention, there may be many other participants in these two illegal organisations who have not yet been prosecuted under the earlier legal framework, simply because the tools were less sharply defined.
Once the Secretary for Security designates the two groups as illegal organisations, any participation in their activities – even something that looks as casual as “liking” their content online, sharing their messages, or donating money – can fall within section 62(2)(d) of the National Security Ordinance as “making payments to the organisation or providing other forms of assistance”, exposing the person to potential prosecution.
Ignorance is not a defence, especially not after the authorities have publicly named and moved against these organisations. People should not be misled by “legally illiterate” commentators claiming that the Secretary for Security’s plan to ban the two groups from operating in Hong Kong is meaningless, when the Ordinance expressly turns their activities and support networks into prosecutable conduct.
In reality, tightening the legal net is both highly effective and badly needed to protect national security, defend China’s constitutional order, and send a clear message that dressing up separatism as an “overseas parliament” will not escape the reach of Hong Kong law.
Lo Wing‑hung
