Expect a Crackdown

I sometimes do not understand what impels people to say the things they do. The editors of the Washington Post decry the situation in Hong Kong:

THE LESSONS of recent events in Hong Kong start with the fact that an enormous number of people took to the streets in peaceful demonstrations against a rollback in the territory’s guarantees of freedom and autonomy from China. The very size of the protests that filled Hong Kong’s downtown, the largest in a generation, is a powerful reminder this is not a splinter movement but the mainstream speaking loud and clear.

Another lesson is that Hong Kong’s protesters are growing angrier and more distraught than they were before. In past years, it often appeared the opposition in Hong Kong was unfailingly orderly, simply asking China to fulfill its original promise to protect Hongkongers’ freedoms. There was little public support for outright independence from China. But the latest demonstrations reflect a new edge of distrust and wariness that should worry the rulers in Beijing.

The militancy is a direct result of China’s gradual but inexorable tightening of the screws on Hong Kong, most recently through a proposed extradition law that would have undermined the territory’s justice system. China’s leaders, who supervise the Hong Kong executive, have no one but themselves to blame for the opposition’s hardened attitude.

closing by proclaiming

The young people must be careful not to give the Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing, or their underlings in Hong Kong, an excuse for more repression. Violence and vandalism invariably play into the hands of the Chinese leaders, who take fright at all signs of protest and democracy. In today’s world, the students can be just as powerful hurling words as smashing windows.

The larger conclusion to be drawn is that China’s leaders should abandon their old thinking. Repression will ultimately fail and generate more resistance. China can’t grind down Hong Kong for another generation, and it would be terribly counterproductive to try.

I can’t tell whether that’s wishful thinking or a free flight of fancy. 23 years ago the Chinese needed Hong Kong and they needed the good will of Europe and the United States. Trade with the United States was still severely constrained by China’s trading status. It was not a member of the World Trade Organization. Its factories were still being built largely by the Germans and many of its people were desperately poor. It did not have a modern military.

None of those is the case now. China can stand on its own and is quite eager to do so. It recognizes that the Europeans and many in the United States. don’t really care what they do so long as the supply chains remain open. The Chinese authorities should be concerned all right. They should be concerned that they no longer have the control over the flow of information from Hong Kong to the balance of China as they a generation ago and China’s newly-prosperous middle class may be infected by Hong Kong’s comparatively democratic and liberal system.

The Chinese authorities need one system to prevail across China, Hong Kong included, much more than they need Hong Kong or foreign good will and there’s nothing the people of Hong Kong can to to prevent it.

Expect a crackdown.