Assessing China’s real intentions
Would a Hong Kong military intervention be worth the political costs to Beijing?
BEIJING — China’s massing of armed personnel carriers and paramilitary anti-terrorist police near Hong Kong’s border is supposed to send a tough warning to protesters to go home. But that doesn’t mean China wants to intervene.
The point of the massive saber-rattling display may be to scare Hong Kong protesters so much that China does not actually have to send in forces.
“My feeling is they’re trying to raise the specter of direct military intervention in Hong Kong, so as not to have to actually do it,” said Ben Bland, a Hong Kong expert with the Sydney, Australiabased independent think tank the Lowy Institute. “They’re trying to scare off protesters by implying that they’re ready to send in the People’s Liberation Army or to take other forms of direct intervention.”
Hu Xijin, editor of the Communist Party-owned Chinese daily Global Times, says that the troop movements in southern China are a “clear warning” to protesters and that the chances of Chinese intervention are rising.
China has reason to hesitate before sending in forces from the mainland: doing so could break Hong Kong, a semiautonomous territory.
But if Beijing’s threats fail to deter protesters who shut down Hong Kong’s airport this week and paralyzed the city’s transportation system a week earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping is not likely to accept a compromise that could encourage future political demands from the city’s nimble and aggressive protest movement.
An intervention would change Hong Kong forever, undermining the civil rights guaranteed by China when it took Hong Kong back from Britain in 1997, including freedom of speech, the right to protest, an independent judiciary and freedom of the press. It would mark an end to Beijing’s already questionable narrative that Hong Kong has a “high level of autonomy,” which is supposed to be central to Beijing’s “one country, two systems” model for Hong Kong.
A large-scale Chinese paramilitary operation to crush protests would risk high civilian casualties, in an echo of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre 30 years ago when the People’s Liberation Army fired on prodemocracy protesters in Beijing and rolled over them with tanks.
China can only intervene if Hong Kong’s government requests it — and this would not be popular with Hong Kongers, who are deeply protective of their rights. The move could drive more support to the protest movement, harden opposition against the Hong Kong administration and potentially trigger a pro-independence insurgency, the polar opposite of what Beijing wants to see.
The financial and economic fallout could also be severe. The economy, already teetering on the brink of recession, could collapse. Stocks probably would plummet, highly mobile capital might flee, many companies might relocate, and Hong Kong could lose its position as one of the world’s top financial markets.
Even the pro-Beijing camp in Hong Kong does not favor Chinese intervention, according to analysts.
Depending on casualties, Chinese intervention could trigger foreign sanctions. It could see the U.S. end Hong Kong’s special status, no longer treating it as a separate customs zone from China for the purposes of trade. For Hong Kong’s economy, heavily dependent on the U.S., this would be a devastating blow.
In recent years the U.S. has questioned whether China’s steady encroachment on Hong Kong merits a review of its special status, but has so far concluded the city retains enough autonomy.
“What’s becoming increasingly clear in the last weeks and months is the Hong Kong government has extremely little autonomy when it comes to the major issues,” said Bland. “That’s been exposed now. Even if the protests die down, people understand now this is a very different Hong Kong.”
Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong is a red line for the Chinese government, core to the Communist Party’s sense of legitimacy. Xi knows he cannot afford to look weak when it comes to confronting the protests.
As the party dials up nationalist propaganda condemning the protesters, the demand in China for tough action is growing.
Xi, however, has to weigh the risks — political, diplomatic and economic — of sending in forces.
Adam Ni, China analyst at Macquarie University in Sydney, said intervention by Chinese military or paramilitary police would be a last resort.
“Beijing doesn’t want to see Tiananmen-style bloodshed,” Ni said. “I don’t think it’s inevitable. The situation on the ground is very fluid.”
He said Beijing was trying to isolate protesters and convince the broader Hong Kong population that continuing protests were not in their economic interests.
“At some point the Chinese leadership may decide that the costs associated with the military suppression might be worth it — to take the reputational and economic hit, but to put an end to the continuing protests once and for all. They would make that choice if they feel the situation to be spiraling out of control and their control increasingly is being challenged. We’re not there yet, but I think we’re moving in that direction.”
Even without intervention, analysts predict that tensions and unrest could continue for years with focus points for anger such as trials of protesters or elections.
Bland said China could try to minimize damage by opting for a lower-level intervention — for example, sending in limited numbers of Chinese paramilitary police to reinforce Hong Kong ’s struggling police.
But therein lies another risk. A lower level of intervention might not succeed in deterring a determined and mobile protest movement. Protesters, initially angered over a bill to extradite suspects to China, are now mounting new demands including universal suffrage.