17 August/18 August 2019 ★ FTWeekend 3INTERNATIONAL
TOM MITCHELL— BEIJING
SUE-LIN WONG AND JADE LI— HONG KONGCrystal Kan, a young veteran of the pro-
tests that haverocked Hong Kongsince
mid-June, knows where she will be if
Chinese troops roll across the territory
to help its embattled police force quell
the movement.
“If the People’s Liberation Army
comes, I will probably just stay at home,
anticipating the withdrawal of all for-
eign investment from Hong Kong and
possible economic collapse of China
that will follow,” Ms Kan, 22, told the
Financial Times.
“Then we will all gather on the streets
again after the PLA has left, unless they
would like to stay in Hong Kong for-
ever,” she added. “I can’t wait for them
to come. We have nothing to lose.”
Until this week, the scenario that Ms
Kan welcomes with the bravado of
youth was, for most people in the
former British colony of 7.4m people,
unthinkable. But events over three dra-
matic days have threatened the long-
held assumption that Beijing would
never do anything that might jeopardise
Hong Kong’s status as a leading interna-
tional financial centre.
Enraged by what they saw as
instances of unjustified police violence
against protesters on the night of August
11, including the use of tear gas inside an
undergroundstation, thousands of
youths descended on Hong Kong Inter-
national Airport, forcing the cancella-
tion of hundreds of flights.
During an emotional press conference
called during the middle of the crisis at
the airport,Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s
embattled, Beijing-appointed chief
executive, sounded despondent. “Hong
Kong is seriously wounded,”she said. “It
will take a long time to recover. Let’s set
aside differences and spend one minute
to look at our city and our home. Can we
bear to push it into an abyss where eve-
rything will perish?”
Hong Kong’s current political crisis
erupted when Ms Lam tried to imple-
ment a controversial extradition law
that would have allowed Hong Kong res-
idents, for the first time, to be sent toChina to face trial for certain crimes.
The move ignited a public firestorm
given the bill’s perceived threat to the
“one country, two systems” framework
that preserved both Hong Kong’s civil
freedoms and independent legal system
grounded in English common law when
it reverted to Chinese sovereignty in- Ms Lam has since shelved the bill
but not formally withdrawn it, as Ms
Kan and her fellow protesters are
demanding.
The fact that Ms Lam’s appeal was fol-
lowed by another night of chaos at the
airport demonstrates just how rudder-
less her government now is.
Her apparent desperation also sug-
gested the Chinese government might
have no other choice but to intervene if
Hong Kong’s 30,000-strong police force
cannot contain what has become a
“flash mob” rebellion, with fleet-footed,
lightly clad protesters routinely running
circles around clunkily armoured police
in the city’s notorious summer heat and
humidity. Indeed, Chinese officials, aca-
demics and state-controlled media all
seized on events at the airport to justify
military intervention if needed.
“The violence in Hong Kong is moving
towards terrorism,” Zhang Jian, a Hong
Kong expert at the Shanghai Institute of
International Studies, said on Thursday
at a Beijing media briefing organised at
short notice by China’s State Council. “If
you don’t take necessary measures, it
might morph into real terrorism.”
“Beijing doesn’t think [military
invention] would violate one country,
two systems,” said Linda Li, a professor
at the City University of Hong Kong.
“They want to prepare the internationalcommunity for it. They want to send the
message that this is an option for them.”
Chinese officials recognise, however,
that it would still be a very costly
option. Deployment of either PLA
troops from their various barracks in
the territory or their People’s Armed
Police counterparts now camped out
just across the border in southern
Guangdong province could end Hong
Kong as the world has known it since it
was seized by British troops in 1841 and
declared a crown colony.
For almost 180 years, Hong Kong has
performed two essential and irreplacea-
ble roles for its Chinese hinterland. It
has been an interface between the rest
of the world and China, whose economy
has been entirely or partially closed
since Hong Kong’s establishment, and a
refuge for millions of Chinese and theirmoney during periods of turmoil.Com-
munist party leaders long hated Hong
Kong as a symbol of the “humiliations”
suffered by China at the hands of the UK
and other colonial powers in the late
19th and early 20th centuries, as well as
its role as a bolt-hole for the party’s
many capitalist “class enemies” who
fled there after the Communist revolu-
tion in 1949. But because they also rec-
ognised Hong Kong’s immense value to
China, they came up with the “one coun-
try, two systems” arrangement.
More recently, many powerful Chi-
nese political families have also come to
appreciate Hong Kong as ahaven for
their immense wealth. The territory has
both its own currency, pegged to the US
dollar, and an open capital account that
has helped it thrive as an international
finance centre where Chinese state-
owned enterprises have raised billions
of dollars through equity offerings since
the mid-1990s.
“Many big [party] families have an
interest in Hong Kong so Beijing wants
to keep Hong Kong alive,” said Zhang
Lifan, a Beijing-based historian and
prominent party critic. Mr Zhang also
notes that slower economic growth in
China and its trade war with the US
make this a particularly bad time for an
escalation of events in Hong Kong.
“In the context of the trade war, if Bei-
jing sends in the PLA or PAP it will trig-
ger international sanctions and put Bei-
jing in an even worse situation. Sending
in the PLA is a lose-lose situation.”
One member of Hong Kong’s pro-Bei-
jing establishment, who asked not to be
identified,said the central government
is still confident it will not have to do the
unthinkable. “Beijing is betting this will
die down,” he said. “[Their message] is
we should present a united front and
focus on restoring order.”
But he is alsoconcerned about what
will happen if Beijing is wrong and it will
have to resort to sending forces into
Hong Kong. “I worry about the young
people [protesting],” he said. “They
shouldn’t underestimate how ruthless
the Chinese Communist party is.”
Additional reporting by Xinning Liu
Marketspage 11Hong Kong protesters push Beijing to brink
China knows a military crackdown would risk dire financial consequences but the option is looking more likely
Running the
gauntlet:
Hong Kong
chief executive
Carrie Lam is
confronted
outside her
office this week
by a protester
sporting an eye
patch, a symbol
of the movement
Thomas Peter/Reuters‘If Beijing
sends inthe PLA
or PAP, itwill trigger
globalsanctions
and putChina in an
even worse
situation’
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