Unprecedented students’ demonstrations and sit-ins in the business district of Hong Kong present China with a great dilemma because they strike at the roots of the 30-year rise of the nation. Since the days of Deng Xiaoping, the compact between the ruling party and the people was that they had full liberty to get rich and lead a good life as long as they kept away from politics and democracy.
Hong Kong, the former British colony restored to China under the one country, two systems formula, would retain its people’s freedoms for 50 years. And it was agreed between London and Beijing that the colony’s chief executive would be elected through universal suffrage in 2017.
Mindful of Hong Kong institutions’ subversive role, Beijing reneged on the deal. While giving universal suffrage with one hand, it took away its real meaning with the other by decreeing that two or three candidates vetted by a nominated body would be allowed to contest to ensure that whoever was elected had Beijing’s approval.
For the young in Hong Kong, the Beijing move was a betrayal and the large student population decided on an “occupy movement” in Central, Hong Kong’s business district that’s the heart of its wealth-producing capitalism. The students’ population is swelling night, night after night, as it made it their temporary home.
A PLA garrison stands a short distance from the students’ sit-in and has been placed on alert, but Beijing is loath to employ it, given the inevitable escalation such an operation would cause. Much of this mass protest has been censored out of the mainland media, but the tech-savvy Chinese have ways of finding out.
Almost all the students demonstrating for their democratic rights, coinciding with China’s most important holiday commemorating the nation’s founding day, are too young to have experienced the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing although its hold on the Chinese psyche remains. But barring this great black mark in the Communist Party’s suppression of democracy, the authorities have managed the explosive potential of popular dissatisfaction rather well.
Dissidents are either allowed to go into exile abroad or disciplined through short or long prison terms or house arrest. The mainland Chinese media have been soft-pedalling the Hong Kong protests, suggesting the hurdles they are causing to the normal life. But as the movement shows little sign of tapering off, the Communist Party is beginning to decry the students, and President Jinping has referred to them.
The question Hong Kong raises is: Does the former British colony have the potential to harm the assiduously built compact between the ruler and the ruled in mainland China? For Beijing, the former British colony remains a valuable citadel of free enterprise, apart from the impressive tourist dollars it attracts.
Many in Beijing’s citadel of power are burning the midnight oil to resolve their great dilemma. Force can only be a last resort, in view of the risk it carries. Perhaps Beijing’s power circles are hoping that the commercially-minded people of HK will themselves rebel against the students because they are affecting their businesses. Although some individuals have expressed dissatisfaction, the bulk of the population still seems to be backing students.
Beijing is resisting giving in to the students’ demand to make the 2017 election of the chief a free vote. Its chief concern is not so much HK’s future, but the effect it would have on the mainland.
There are no easy answers because human beings cannot always live in separate compartments of having liberties in conducting economic activity while being barred from any meaningful political activity. No one expects the edifice of the new Communism the Chinese leadership has created to topple soon. But the HK students are chipping away at the credibility of the edifice Beijing has created. The marvel is that the new attack on the edifice has come from teenagers, some as young as 16, passionately believing that they are being denied their birthright. For Beijing, this is totally contradictory to the delicate balance it has created on being rich and Communist. The world watches with bated breath as HK students man the barricades unmindful of the risks. The stark question Beijing faces is whether it will in the end believe it is wiser to eat humble pie and give in to the students’ main demand, rather than risk a new conflagration.
reminiscent of the dark days of Tiananmen Square?
