Leaders 13A
fewdaysagohundredsofyoungpeople,someteenagers,
turned the redbrick campus of the Hong Kong Polytechnic
University into a fortress. Clad in black, their faces masked in
black too, most of them remained defiant as they came under
siege. Police shot rubber bullets and jets of blue-dyed water at
them. Defenders crouched over glass bottles, filling them with
fuel and stuffing them with fuses to make bombs. Many cheered
the news that an arrow shot by one of their archers had hit a po-
liceman in the leg. After more than five months of anti-govern-
ment unrest in Hong Kong, the stakes are turning deadly.
This time, many exhausted protesters surrendered to the po-
lice—the youngest of them were given safe passage. Mercifully,
massive bloodshed has so far been avoided. But Hong Kong is in
peril (see Briefing). As The Economistwent to press, some protes-
ters were refusing to leave the campus, and protests continued
in other parts of the city. They attract nothing like the numbers
who attended rallies at the outset—perhaps 2m on one occasion
in June. But they often involve vandalism and Molotov cocktails.
Despite the violence, public support for the protesters—even the
bomb-throwing radicals—remains strong. Citizens may turn out
in force for local elections on November 24th, which have taken
on new significance as a test of the popular will and a chance to
give pro-establishment candidates a drubbing. The govern-
ment’s one concession—withdrawing a bill that
would have allowed suspects to be sent to main-
land China for trial—did little to restore calm.
Protesters say they want nothing less than de-
mocracy. They cannot pick their chief executive,
and elections for Hong Kong’s legislature are
wildly tilted. So the protests may continue.
The Communist Party in Beijing does not
seem eager to get its troops to crush the unrest.
Far from it, insiders say. This is a problem that the party does not
want to own; the economic and political costs of mass-firing into
crowds in a global financial centre would be huge. But own the
problem it does. The heavy-handedness of China’s leader, Xi
Jinping, and public resentment of it, is a primary cause of the
turmoil. He says he wants a “great rejuvenation” of his country.
But his brutal, uncompromising approach to control is feeding
anger not just in Hong Kong but all around China’s periphery.
When Mao Zedong’s guerrillas seized power in China in 1949,
they did not take over a clearly defined country, much less an
entirely willing one. Hong Kong was ruled by the British, nearby
Macau by the Portuguese. Taiwan was under the control of the
Nationalist government Mao had just overthrown. The moun-
tain terrain of Tibet was under a Buddhist theocracy that chafed
at control from Beijing. Communist troops had yet to enter an-
other immense region in the far west, Xinjiang, where Muslim
ethnic groups did not want to be ruled from afar.
Seventy years on, the party’s struggle to establish the China it
wants is far from over. Taiwan is still independent in all but
name. In January its ruling party, which favours a more formal
separation, is expected to do well once again in presidential and
parliamentary polls. “Today’s Hong Kong, tomorrow’s Taiwan” is
a popular slogan in Hong Kong that resonates with its intended
audience,Taiwanesevoters.SinceMrXitookpowerin2012 they
have watched him chip away at Hong Kong’s freedoms and send
warplanes on intimidating forays around Taiwan. Few of them
want their rich, democratic island to be swallowed up by the dic-
tatorship next door, even if many of them have thousands of
years of shared culture with mainlanders.
Tibet and Xinjiang are quiet, but only because people there
have been terrorised into silence. After widespread outbreaks of
unrest a decade ago, repression has grown overwhelming. In the
past couple of years Xinjiang’s regional government has built a
network of prison camps and incarcerated about 1m people,
mostly ethnic Uighurs, often simply for being devout Muslims.
Official Chinese documents recently leaked to the New York
Timeshave confirmed the horrors unleashed there (see Cha-
guan). Officials say this “vocational training”, as they chillingly
describe it, is necessary to eradicate Islamist extremism. In the
long run it is more likely to fuel rage that will one day explode.
The slogan in Hong Kong has another part: “Today’s Xinjiang,
tomorrow’s Hong Kong”. Few expect such a grim outcome for the
former British colony. But Hong Kongers are right to view the
party with fear. Even if Mr Xi decides not to use troops in Hong
Kong, his view of challenges to the party’s authority is clear. He
thinks they should be crushed.
This week America’s Congress passed a bill,
nearly unanimously, requiring the government
to apply sanctions to officials guilty of abusing
human rights in Hong Kong. Nonetheless, Chi-
na is likely to lean harder on Hong Kong’s gov-
ernment, to explore whether it can pass a harsh
new anti-sedition law, and to require students
to submit to “patriotic education” (ie, party pro-
paganda). The party wants to know the names of
those who defy it, the better to make their lives miserable later.
Mr Xi says he wants China to achieve its great rejuvenation
by 2049, the 100th anniversary of Mao’s victory. By then, he says,
the country will be “strong, democratic, culturally advanced,
harmonious and beautiful”. More likely, if the party remains in
power that long, Mao’s unfinished business will remain a ter-
rible sore. Millions of people living in the outlying regions that
Mao claimed for the party will be seething.
Not all the Communist elite agree with Mr Xi’s clenched-fist
approach, which is presumably why someone leaked the Xin-
jiang papers. Trouble in the periphery of an empire can swiftly
spread to the centre. This is doubly likely when the peripheries
are also where the empire rubs up against suspicious neigh-
bours. India is wary of China’s militarisation of Tibet. China’s
neighbours anxiously watch the country’s military build-up in
the Taiwan Strait. A big fear is that an attack on the island could
trigger war between China and America. The party cannot win
lasting assent to its rule by force alone.
In Hong Kong “one country, two systems” is officially due to
expire in 2047. On current form its system is likely to be much
like the rest of China’s long before then. That is why Hong Kong’s
protesters are so desperate, and why the harmony Mr Xi talks so
blithely of creating in China will elude him. 7Hong Kong in revolt
The territory is not the only part of China’s periphery that resents the heavy hand of the Communist PartyLeaders