{"id":49638,"date":"2019-08-07T15:11:23","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T05:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=49638"},"modified":"2019-08-07T15:11:23","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T05:11:23","slug":"how-hong-kong-plays-out-will-define-both-china-and-our-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/how-hong-kong-plays-out-will-define-both-china-and-our-world\/","title":{"rendered":"How Hong Kong plays out will define both China and our world"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The protests in Hong Kong started over CEO Carrie Lam\u2019s extradition bill and have turned into a defining issue for the trajectory of China as a state and a society, and for the Chinese state\u2019s relationships internationally.<\/p>\n

What Carrie Lam does is important, but what President Xi Jinping orders to be done is definitive.<\/p>\n

The protests are not, as Chinese state media likes to say, about \u2018escalating violence by radicals<\/a>\u2019. Some 2\u00a0million<\/a> out of Hong Kong\u2019s 7.5 million people have taken part in the demonstrations\u2014which makes this a mass expression of views, not the efforts of a \u2018tiny number of radicals\u2019.<\/p>\n

Footage over the past two months has shown the world that the protesters come from all walks of life and all age groups. Professionals like air-traffic controllers, civil servants, construction workers, lawyers and finance workers have joined in strikes or other protest action, disrupting essential services. Their bravery in doing so should shame all of us who mutter about Xi\u2019s state \u2018punishing us\u2019 by holding up wine shipments. John Howard\u2019s recent comments<\/a> about our fundamental democratic values, the effects of authoritarianism and the resilience of the human spirit on display in Hong Kong remind of us of what\u2019s really at stake here.<\/p>\n

The violence has been perpetrated by a mix of police action, dubious thugs<\/a> and exasperated protesters. For the scale of the mass movement, though, the protests have been remarkably peaceful. That might change as Hong Kong authorities fail to engage with what is driving the protests and treat them as simply a public order problem and a challenge to their own and Beijing\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n

The protesters certainly want more from Lam than her condemning the protests and painting them as violent radicals. They want her to withdraw the extradition bill she has suspended and they want an independent public inquiry into police actions. They\u2019ve also called for Lam\u2019s resignation, an end to labelling the protests \u2018riots\u2019, and universal suffrage to elect the legislative council.<\/p>\n

Most of all, though, what\u2019s got millions of Hong Kong residents onto the streets and disrupting services is Beijing\u2019s and Lam\u2019s moving away from \u2018one China, two systems\u2019 towards Hong Kong being assimilated into authoritarian China\u2019s one-party political and legal system. So it\u2019s ironic to hear Chinese state media talking about the protests as endangering<\/a> the \u2018one China\u2019 framework.<\/p>\n

The protesters\u2019 fundamental call is about preserving Hong Kong\u2019s rule of law and expanding the people\u2019s voices in how they are governed. They want more<\/em> difference in the two systems, while Beijing wants to fast-track convergence.<\/p>\n

What must be causing sleepless nights in Beijing\u2019s Zhongnanhai compound is what to do from here. It\u2019s not really about Hong Kong now, but about the future of the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s rule of the multi-ethnic empire that makes up today\u2019s China, and about the kind of relationship Xi\u2019s state can have with other nations.<\/p>\n

Handled badly, Hong Kong will ripple through China, further widening the unhealed wounds from Tiananmen and showing the repressive will and brutality of the CCP and its security organs. It will make clear to any doubtful Taiwanese that unification means assimilation and doesn\u2019t mean Taiwan\u2019s democracy becoming one of two systems. And it will make it even harder for advocates of uncritical, deepening engagement with China under Xi to look themselves in the mirror and be credible in public.<\/p>\n

You can sense the anxiety about internal stability and unity in China\u2019s latest national defence white paper<\/a>. It\u2019s like hearing someone desperately telling themselves things are fine when they know they are not: \u2018China continues to enjoy political stability, ethnic unity and social stability.\u2019 That\u2019s why China\u2019s expenditure on internal security forces is higher even than its expenditure on the People\u2019s Liberation Army.<\/p>\n

In this Beijing echo chamber, problems don\u2019t flow from the CCP\u2019s authoritarian rule, but instead come from surprising, isolated outbreaks of \u2018separatist forces\u2019, with \u2018external separatist forces\u2019 responsible for unrest in Tibet and \u2018East Turkistan\u2019. This pretence appears to be fooling no one but the party, those without a source of news other than Chinese state media, and the wilfully blind advocates of getting hold of as much of China\u2019s wealth as they can. It\u2019s certainly not fooling Chinese citizens in Xinjiang, Tibet or Hong Kong about the reality of Xi\u2019s China Dream<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Xi and his colleagues on the CCP\u2019s central committee and the Central Military Commission, including defence minister General Wei Fenghe, don\u2019t have many good options given the actions they and Lam have taken to date. Had it been delivered early in the protests, a gesture of withdrawing the extradition bill could have taken momentum out of what is now a mass movement.<\/p>\n

Done now, concessions from Hong Kong\u2019s authorities\u2014like withdrawing the bill and announcing a public inquiry into the use of violence by police\u2014might split off some of the protesters and so slow momentum. It would fit with the way the CCP tries elsewhere in China to use local actions to spot and neuter dissent before it grows.<\/p>\n

Lam\u2019s resignation might sound like an appropriate response; however, the immediate obvious problem is what happens next. Any candidate Beijing might produce to replace her would almost certainly bring protesters back out onto the streets. A popular public Hong Kong candidate would be unacceptable to Beijing. Lam will probably stay on as a shock absorber for dissent.<\/p>\n

Voices like Wei\u2019s won\u2019t help. His remarkable dose of truthfulness<\/a> at June\u2019s Shangri-La Dialogue, when he said the Tiananmen Square massacre of unarmed Chinese youths and other citizens by the military at the party leadership\u2019s direction was \u2018correct policy\u2019, shows adherence to the CCP and \u2018Xi Jinping Thought<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

The temptation to intervene has to be there, just as proved to be the case in June 1989. Well-publicised footage<\/a> of PLA units stationed in Hong Kong training to do urban operations is partly about sending a message. Beijing could order in the PLA and say the incident was \u2018political turbulence\u2019 and the central government took measures to stop it. They could also order in the aptly named People\u2019s Armed Police. That would fit with the party\u2019s line about subversion, separatist forces and external forces fomenting unrest.<\/p>\n

Can Xi manage Hong Kong so that it doesn\u2019t become a petri dish example of the limits of his rule? To do so, he\u2019ll need to shift strategy and provide some outlets for the mass public sentiments expressed by the people of Hong Kong. His instincts are probably to keep a tough line and wait things out, but Hong Kongers seem to be gaining energy from this approach, not losing it, and the stakes for Xi are increasing as this happens.<\/p>\n

If Xi sends in the PLA or People\u2019s Armed Police, it will be a crystallising moment for all people, governments, companies and universities engaging with the Chinese state and economy.<\/p>\n

In 1989, a similar use of force by Xi\u2019s predecessor led Australia\u2019s Bob Hawke<\/a> to grant asylum to 20,000 Chinese students and families living in Australia. Just as it did then, the Chinese state\u2019s use of lethal force against its own people will split the international community.<\/p>\n

There will be states and individuals who will downplay even the most egregious violence\u2014talking airily and in abstract terms about the importance of \u2018stability\u2019. There will be voices saying we should separate trade from foreign and defence policy and turn a blind eye to actions against our deepest values and our interests. But Xi\u2019s China Dream of win\u2013win peaceful development and resolution of disputes will be an artefact of propaganda that can be stored with back copies of \u2018Xi Jinping Thought\u2019.<\/p>\n

Xi will have demonstrated that the PLA remains the party\u2019s armed wing, to be used against his people and any other enemies of the party. Trade deals and investments will have a bald new context. The term \u2018trade war\u2019 will be exposed for the overblown label it is in light of real violence. Xi will be at war with his own people and the question for the rest of us will be, \u2018Whose side are you on?\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The protests in Hong Kong started over CEO Carrie Lam\u2019s extradition bill and have turned into a defining issue for the trajectory of China as a state and a society, and for the Chinese state\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":49639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1383,52,981],"class_list":["post-49638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-ccp","tag-china","tag-hong-kong"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Hong Kong plays out will define both China and our world | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/how-hong-kong-plays-out-will-define-both-china-and-our-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Hong Kong plays out will define both China and our world | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The protests in Hong Kong started over CEO Carrie Lam\u2019s extradition bill and have turned into a defining issue for the trajectory of China as a state and a society, and for the Chinese state\u2019s ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/how-hong-kong-plays-out-will-define-both-china-and-our-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-08-07T05:11:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/GettyImages-1149495159-e1565153626383.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"950\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"634\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Michael Shoebridge\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael Shoebridge\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/how-hong-kong-plays-out-will-define-both-china-and-our-world\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/GettyImages-1149495159-e1565153626383.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/GettyImages-1149495159-e1565153626383.jpg\",\"width\":950,\"height\":634,\"caption\":\"HONG KONG, HONG KONG - JUNE 12: A protester makes a gesture during a protest on June 12, 2019 in Hong Kong China. 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