What if China sends paramilitary forces to crush the Hong Kong protests?

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-based 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 with the hope that that’s enough to force people to back down.”

Hu Xijin, editor of the Communist Party-owned Chinese daily Global Times, says 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 semi-autonomous 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 pro-democracy 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 likely 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.

“They don’t want Hong Kong to become just another city in China,” said Bland.

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 U.S., this would be a devastating blow.