China threat hangs over Hong Kong
Intervention from Beijing over protests grows more likely
While China doesn’t want to intervene in the summer-long protests that have shaken Hong Kong, that doesn’t mean it won’t. The movement, now in its seventh week, has veered into more dangerous territory on two fronts. Protesters, who had previously besieged the city’s legislature and police headquarters, directed their ire at China itself on Sunday, defacing the central Government’s official emblem and pelting its building in Hong Kong with eggs. Needless to say, their actions were not well-received in Beijing. In an escalation on the other side, a group armed with metal rods and wooden poles beat up antigovernment protesters and others inside a subway station late on Sunday night. The attack injured 45 people, including a man who remained in critical condition. Beijing supporters had tussled with protesters previously, but not on this scale.
Neither side wants China’s People’s Liberation Army to step in, but the growing chaos and what China will see as a direct challenge to its authority raise the risks.
The thuggish attack on the protesters brought accusations of connivance between police and criminal gangs, though Hong Kong’s police commissioner flatly denied it and it remained unclear who was behind it.
Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo said the Sunday night subway attack showed “more than apparent” involvement from the triad, a branch of organised crime in Hong Kong. He said the attack “doesn't seem accidental in any way”. “It’s all organised.”
Lam Cheuk-ting, a legislator who was admitted to hospital after the incident, accused the police of failing to protect the public. “Is Hong Kong now allowing triads to do what they want, beating up people on the street with weapons?” he asked reporters.
Any intervention by China would likely bring international condemnation and could endanger Hong Kong’s status as a financial centre governed by rule of law. It would also draw comparisons to China’s deadly military crackdown on Beijing’s pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, an event the Government wants the world to forget.
For China, it’s not just an economic question but also a political one. Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” concept that gives the city a fair degree of autonomy. Hong Kong residents have much broader rights and freedoms than mainland Chinese.
The success of the formula is important to China, which wants to use it to bring the self-governing island of Taiwan back under its control. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is already using the unrest in Hong Kong to argue that “one country, two systems” doesn’t work, and a Chinese military intervention would confirm the fears of many Taiwanese.
The best outcome for China would be a de-escalation of the protests and a return to relative normalcy, as happened after the last major prodemocracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, the student-driven “Umbrella Movement” that occupied streets for more than two months in 2014.
Many of this summer’s protesters are Umbrella Movement veterans who were disappointed that those protests failed to bring about change. At least some have shown themselves unwilling to back down this time.
“The problem is that it is not entirely up to the central Government,” said Zhang Lifan, a Chinese historian and political commentator. “If the radical people in Hong Kong put forward the advocacy of independence, making the situation spin out of control, the central Government will certainly intervene.”
That isn’t the most likely outcome, but with no clear way out of the ongoing protests, they could escalate further, making Beijing more skittish.
Among the many messages the protesters have taken to spraypainting on walls is “Hong Kong is not China”. On one level, it is a statement that Hong Kong has a more independent legal system and greater freedoms than the mainland.
On another level, it reflects a growing disenchantment with life as part of China, not only political but also economic. An influx of Chinese money is blamed for pushing up real estate prices beyond the reach of many young people.
For China, losing Hong Kong a second time would be worse than a collapse of the “one country, two systems” model. The pro-Beijing Government in Hong Kong last year outlawed a political party that advocated independence for the city of 7.4 million people.
“One begins to wonder whether the Chinese Communist Party wants Hong Kong to descend into chaos, so that it has an excuse to step in, or whether its mismanagement means that such chaos is inevitable,” said Kevin Carrico, a senior lecturer in Chinese studies at Monash University in Australia.
The ruling Communist Party values stability above all, a choice it made in deciding to end the Tiananmen protests by force.
China’s stability has come at a price to personal freedoms such as free speech. Under current President Xi Jinping, the party has sought to increase control over society, from religion to social media, in moves that have reverberated in Hong Kong.