Will China Crush the Hong Kong Protests?

Will China Crush the Hong Kong Protests?

 Twenty-five years after China’s brutal suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square, a new generation of students is filling the streets of Hong Kong. Orville Schell on whether China’s new leader will compromise or crack down.

 

By Orville Schell in the Wall Street Journal

For anyone who observed the student-led mass protests that gripped Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for seven weeks in 1989, watching students fill the streets of Hong Kong in 2014 is a bittersweet experience. There is a natural instinct for Western observers—reared on Enlightenment values and the notion that history, even in China, moves inevitably toward ever-greater freedom and democracy—to be gratified by what we see happening there. We are uplifted by the spectacle of people struggling not only for liberty but to become “more like us.”

But for the demonstrators themselves, there is a danger. They can become too intoxicated by a feeling of invincibility, of marching in history’s current, especially once their movement gathers sufficient force to occupy a highly symbolic seat of power like Central in Hong Kong, the financial heart of the former Crown Colony.

This sense of being “on the right side of history” tends to make demonstrators forget that momentarily besting a lightly armed police force (as they just did in Hong Kong) may be only a Pyrrhic victory. After such triumphs, it is easy to begin believing in a protest movement’s seemingly irresistible momentum.

Such movements sometimes do indeed change history for the better. But also sometimes for the worse: They can engender horrific periods of restoration and reaction, during which all impulses of political reform are crushed. That is precisely what happened after the violent suppression of the mass demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989. And it could happen again in Hong Kong now.

I recall with perfect vividness watching those dramatic events unfold in Beijing. What started as a simple memorial to the life and death of the former liberal Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang soon evolved into an almost two-month-long mass movement with a full menu of demands. Just as in Hong Kong, it was an inchoate, ever-changing movement made up of many factions, which deprived it of an effective central nervous system.

As it spontaneously, and peacefully, gathered momentum, the 1989 protest came to include as many as a million people in the capital alone and to occupy not only all of Tiananmen Square’s vastness but much of downtown Beijing as well. When it morphed into a hunger strike, hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, including many families, elderly people and visitors, began flooding into the square not just to see what was going on but also to bring food, drink, clothing, medical help and financial support to the protesters.

This swelling crowd was also soon swept by both a euphoric feeling of collective accomplishment and a deep sense of the rightness of what they were doing. This feeling was only reinforced when, after martial law was declared on May 20, 1989, and 30 divisions of the People’s Liberation Army were mobilized to retake Tiananmen Square, “the people,” to their own utter astonishment, managed to surround and immobilize them. As they both chastised the soldiers and beseeched them to join their cause, offering them food, water and even bouquets of flowers, everyone was left wondering how, or if, the Communist Party would ever be able to get this genie back into the bottle.

This first wave of troops to enter Beijing did finally give up and retreat, just as the armed police in Hong Kong retreated last Monday after trying to disperse the demonstrators with pepper spray and tear gas. In withstanding this attack, thanks to a sea of colorful umbrellas used as shields, the Hong Kong movement surprised the world and quickly acquired its name: the Umbrella Revolution.

It was natural for demonstrators in both historical episodes to feel a sense of triumph—even a certain sense of indestructibility. But we forget at our peril that 25 years ago in Beijing, it was barely a week before a second military force of combat-ready troops was mobilized to shoot its way into the heart of the city. Suddenly, the protesters’ earlier feelings of euphoria and invincibility looked very naive.

And now in Hong Kong, a new generation of idealistic young Chinese students has been sparked to activism by the same heady principles of democracy. Filled with a similar exuberant hope that somehow their demands will prevail, they have left their university classes, lofted picket signs, donned protective masks and taken to the streets in the suffocating heat to bring the center of another great Chinese city to a grinding halt. And once again, a disorganized, reluctant government is challenged to respond to a tidal surge of destabilizing youthful political energy.

But these students, like their peers in 1989, are challenging not just the local Hong Kong political establishment but the authority of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, and in the most brazen way. What is more, they are doing so just as its new general secretary, Xi Jinping, seeks to bring about what he calls a great “rejuvenation” (fuxing) for China.

For the past 150 years, China has tenaciously striven to claw its way up from the ignominy of being the “sick man of Asia” (dongfang bingfu). Mr. Xi wants to see the country reclaim its rightful measure of global wealth, power, greatness and respect, so this rebuke by students in Hong Kong has been all the more bitter an affront.

What makes the demonstrations even harder for him to tolerate, much less accept, is the fact that the party has struggled for a quarter-century now to blot out any remembrance of those humiliating events in 1989. And today the streets of yet another iconic Chinese city are filled once more with unhappy, insubordinate students. It’s bad enough that the students are challenging the party’s leadership and legitimacy, but there is the added indignity that they are also reminding the world of what happened in 1989 and suggesting that China’s “economic miracle” isn’t the work of perfection that it sometimes appears to be from afar.

As the country’s future intellectual elite and the seedbed of its storied official class, students have traditionally occupied a celebrated place in China’s social hierarchy, a fact that only makes what is happening in Hong Kong all the more agonizing for Beijing. After all, these student protesters aren’t just opposing one-party rule; they are opting out of Mr. Xi’s “China dream” (zhongguo meng), his much ballyhooed vision of a reinvigorated China (which includes Hong Kong) led by a strong leader and unified state. Perhaps most mortifying of all to him and the party leadership is the inescapable reality that all of this is happening—once again—on television, before the eyes of the world, in a deeply humiliating way.

Such eruptions of popular sentiment are embarrassing enough for any political leadership, but they are especially so for China’s party chiefs, who in this putative “people’s republic” are supposed to unfailingly represent the interests of “their people.” For these men, sequestered in their leadership compound beside Beijing’s ancient Forbidden City, deference to their authority is still every bit as important as it was for the emperors of old. But the Hong Kong demonstrations, like those in Tiananmen Square a generation ago, openly defy not just this authority but the legitimacy of the whole party, state and Leninist political system.

Launched in the most symbolically freighted places in each city, these protests have caused a painful “loss of face” (diulian)—that uniquely Chinese concern that centers around the agony of public shame. And whenever face is lost, rationalizations must be concocted and outside conspirators must be identified to help absorb the blame. Thus it was no surprise when, last Monday, the People’s Daily (the official media organ of the party) blamed the Hong Kong protests on “anti-China forces” from Great Britain and the U.S. and called them the work of “a gang of people whose hearts belong to colonial rule and who are besotted with Western democracy.”

The party’s strenuous denunciation of such “hostile outside forces” is instructive. It suggests that our own assumptions over the past few decades—that open markets would somehow lead inevitably to open societies and redirect China from what President Bill Clinton once called “the wrong side of history”—were pipe dreams.

Compounding Mr. Xi’s problem of resolving Hong Kong’s current crisis is the fact that what has distinguished his nearly two years of rule in Beijing is his reputation as a strong and unyielding leader. To date, he has almost always taken a hard line in solving problems, especially those related to issues of territorial sovereignty, what he and the party call “core interests” (hexin liyi).

In these matters, Mr. Xi has rarely evinced any tendency to make concessions. Indeed, in many ways, he has been far less flexible and “pragmatic” than his model, Deng Xiaoping. Perhaps Mr. Xi feels that he needs to adopt a posture of toughness because he is acutely aware of just how precarious China’s domestic situation actually is and fears that others with grievances might equate flexibility with weakness. In which case, he may be understandably apprehensive lest even considering the student demands in Hong Kong makes him appear to lack resolve.

The problem with such a pose of unalloyed strength is that while it can inspire confidence, it can also prevent a leader from considering concessions when they might be the only way to head off a train wreck. To exclude compromise as an option deprives any leader of a whole array of invaluable tools. As Mr. Xi seeks an acceptable exit from the standoff in Hong Kong, his previous posture puts him in a bind.

Nor does the crucial historical analogy help matters: If there is one lesson that the Chinese Communist Party took away from its near-death experience in 1989, it is that such disturbances need to be suppressed as early as possible. The logic of such thinking is obvious, but because Hong Kong presents Mr. Xi with a very different challenge, we can only hope that he will surprise us with a different reaction. The fact that armed police in Hong Kong were withdrawn after firing tear gas and creating a near riot suggests that the Chinese government’s new short-term strategy may be simply to wait out the protesters. But it remains to be seen whether Mr. Xi is really reaching for a more flexible long-term response.

On Wednesday, the People’s Daily dismissed the protesters in Hong Kong, saying that their movement was sure to fail. “If this extreme minority of people insists on violating the rule of law and stirring up trouble,” it proclaimed, “they will end up suffering the consequences of their actions.” On Friday, the paper accused protesters of using “illegal means such as damaging Hong Kong’s rule of law and order” in the name of calling for universal suffrage. But, it cautioned darkly, “They are challenging the highest authority of the nation.”

These were blunt warnings for demonstrators not to allow themselves to become deluded, like their predecessors in Tiananmen Square a quarter-century ago, as to where actual power in China resides.

The outcome of the conflict in Hong Kong is being closely watched by neighboring countries that have maritime disputes with China—Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia. And Taiwan, a self-governing “province of China” (as Beijing calls it), has also been watching. The island nation is doubtless now far less inclined than before to embrace the formula of “one country, two systems,” under which Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule, to achieve its own “reunification” with the mainland.

As the saga of Hong Kong unfolds, we will learn what role Mr. Xi finally decides to play in this unscripted drama—whether or not he is willing and able to temper his hitherto hard-line approach with a degree of resilience and adaptability. Some political scientists now use the term “flexible authoritarianism” to describe Deng Xiaoping’s tenure and even some aspects of Mao Zedong’s reign.

What distinguished Deng’s remarkable rule (notwithstanding the brutal suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square) was the latitude he allowed himself both at home and abroad. He was able not only to implement economic and social changes, effectively upending Mao’s revolution, but also to establish full diplomatic relations with the U.S. He then implemented his audacious new strategy of “one country, two systems” to bring Hong Kong back to “the Motherland,” largely winning the confidence of the people of both Hong Kong and Great Britain and allowing China to regain sovereignty peacefully over the former colony. Such pragmatism in statecraft is an attribute that China’s current leadership still claims to esteem.

We don’t know how Mr. Xi will deal, in the coming days and weeks, with this latest eruption of democratic sentiment on Chinese soil, but his choices will certainly set precedents that will apply far beyond Hong Kong. He may manage for now to avoid the disastrous model of 1989, when the perceived effrontery and persistence of protesters finally incited the party leadership to react violently. Avoiding another such confrontation would not only be a victory for Mr. Xi but would help him to emerge as a different kind of Chinese leader from the one we have come to know—one who recognizes that sometimes accommodation is wise policy because it solves problems, builds trust and can serve the greater good, even as it sometimes runs the risk of being mistaken for weakness.

What has distinguished Mr. Xi to date is his persona as a tough, immovable leader. He has gone so far as to suggest that a “real man” might have been able to head off the demise of the Soviet Union. Such Putin-esque posturing will prove risky in a place like Hong Kong, where many already think that China’s leaders possess tin ears and strong, club-wielding arms. Hong Kong isn’t eastern Ukraine. Should Mr. Xi decide to take a softer path, it may signal that he is also capable of a more mature, subtle understanding. If he wants to build trust and confidence with surrounding countries, it is hard to imagine a more convincing and immediate way to do so.

Whatever Mr. Xi chooses to do, it will reveal a significant new piece of his emerging profile as a leader. From Hong Kong’s fate, we will be able to glean important hints as to whether the U.S. and other democratic countries can expect to collaborate with China, despite all our disagreements, on problems such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, big-power aggression, terrorism and pandemics. These threats are far more menacing to the world than a throng of idealistic students in the streets of Hong Kong, hoping against hope that they can win a few concessions and avoid the fate of their mourned predecessors in Tiananmen Square.

Mr. Schell is Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society and co-author, with John Delury, of “Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the 21st Century.”