Are Chinese forces massing across from Hong Kong?
Weeks of unrest in the Chinese territory have begun to overwhelm Hong Kong’s police, who have found themselves in violent clashes with protesters. China warned Monday that the civil disorder had gone “far beyond” peaceful protest after police deployed tear gas over the weekend.
The nature of the Chinese buildup wasn’t clear; the official said that units of the Chinese military or armed police had gathered at the border with Hong Kong. The official briefed reporters on a range of issues on condition he not be identified.
Maybe or maybe not. There are already 6,000 ground forces in Hong Kong with more around China.
After eight weeks of protests, how far along is the CCP decision-making process to go postal on the protesters:
Now China is facing a similar dilemma to 1989: whether to use the military to crack down on the increasingly ferocious street demonstrations in the former British colony. If Beijing goes down that route it risks international opprobium and the end of the carefully spun illusion that President Xi Jinping is a voice of reason in an emotionally over-charged world. But the alternative, to wait out the crisis and let the overwhelmed local police handle the protest movement, carries its own dangers. The authority of the Hong Kong government is melting by the day and Xi wants to sedate its inhabitants at the latest by October when the country celebrates with great fanfare the 70th anniversary of Chinese communist rule.
In Tiananmen Square it took 55 days before factions in the ruling communist party could agree on the use of soldiers against citizens. The prime minister Li Peng declared martial law on May 20 1989; two weeks later paratroopers, commandos and tanks were sent on a killing mission.
So the CCP can already see that the local police aren't handling the problem for Peking.
And the Chinese released a video of "anti-riot" training. I had anti-riot training. Let me just say that the Chinese highlight a lot more firepower than I was ever trained to use.
Meanwhile, despite the problems in Hong Kong, Peking has time to address the other democratic troublemakers in Taiwan:
China stepped up pressure on Taiwan on Wednesday as it announced the suspension of individual travel permits to the self-ruled democratic island "due to current cross-strait relations".
Relations between Communist-ruled Beijing and Taipei have plummeted since President Tsai Ing-wen came to power in 2016 because her party refuses to recognise the idea that Taiwan is part of "one China".
Truly, Peking wishes they could just send every Hong Kong and Taiwan resident to reeducation prisons the way China can do to Uighurs:
Officials from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region said on Tuesday that most of the people detained in the area’s contentious re-education centres have been moved out of the facilities and have signed "work contracts" with local companies.
However, those assertions were challenged by accounts from Uighurs and Kazakhs who say their relatives remain missing.
The United States, human rights groups and independent analysts estimate that about 1 million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang’s heavily guarded internment camps, which the Chinese government calls vocational training centres.
Taiwan and Hong Kong clearly have reason to work together to defend freedom.
Taiwan could take the lead on this:
Long ago I concluded that a League of Democracies as an alternative to the autocrat-ridden United Nations is not the solution to our problems in that body.
But why couldn't Taiwan host a League of Democracies on Taiwan to discuss the mechanics of democracy promotion and democracy practice?
It could be composed of nations, provinces/states, and cities that want to discuss these issues.
As a body discussing the concept of democracy in both state and sub-state actors, it would not run afoul of Chinese red lines about independence. China has offered one state with two systems to Hong Kong--although it really doesn't--and to Taiwan to ease resistance to Peking absorbing Taiwan. How could China oppose democracy as a concept apart from independence when it formally agrees?
Yet it would be a powerful symbol of resistance to Chinese efforts to deny Taiwan democracy.
And this raises the stakes although it puts Hong Kong firmly on the freedom side:
Over the past two weekends, as crowds of pro-democracy protesters massed in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district, they adopted a slogan that had not been heard in the previous weeks of protest. Cries of “Go Hong Kongers!” “No extradition to China!” and “Withdraw the bill!” have been common, referencing the proposed extradition law that ignited the movement.
But recently, with the roar of their voices amplified and echoing in the cavern created by the surrounding buildings and overhead freeway bridges, the crowd has been chanting: “Reclaim Hong Kong! Revolution of our time!” That’s a frightening slogan for the city’s establishment, one that points to just how deeply Hong Kongers have turned against Beijing and one that may prompt a dangerous response.
Wow.
If America is really to blame for Hong Kong protests in defense of freedom in the eyes of the CCP, mere local police are insufficient. The justification for sending in troops writes itself--if thirty years of thinking about how a surveillance state can kill the democracy baby in the cradle isn't working--to crush the protesters with a spasm of violence.
If we are going to be blamed for unrest even though we are simply the most powerful democracy that opposes tyranny and so set an example in contrast to the bloody thugs in Peking, we should probably do something to help Hong Kong and Taiwan win the tyranny-democracy battle.
After all, China is waging that battle here already.
UPDATE: So China is unlikely to send in the army despite the threat to the Chinese Communist Party?
But sicking the military on citizens could remind mainland China, and the world, that the party's military, which is the biggest in the world, pledges allegiance only to the party, and not to the people of China.
I hate to spoil the comfort zone, but I think that reminding the people on the mainland that the CCP has all the guns on this side is a feature and not a bug.
And for the mission of slaughtering civilians the People's Armed Police will be indistinguishable from the People's Liberation Army Army.
UPDATE: Is this premature?
Some of the protest messages were impossible to miss. In Wanchai’s Golden Bauhinia Square, a magnet for tourists from other parts of China, kids spray-painted a statue with provocative statements such as “The Heavens will destroy the Communist Party” and “Liberate Hong Kong.”
In Hong Kong, revolution is in the air. What started out as an unexpectedly large demonstration in late April against a piece of legislation—an extradition bill—has become a call for democracy in the territory as well as independence from China and the end of communism on Chinese soil.
Revolution in China might be the best route to save freedom in Hong Kong (and Taiwan for that matter), as I have suggested.
But even if the mainland isn't ready for revolution, CCP fear that the mainland could be ready for revolution may spark a violent suppression of the Hong Kong protests.
On the other hand, taking a hopeless stand may be the only way to keep the idea of freedom alive in Hong Kong even as Peking tightens the screws to get "one country, one system--ours."
One professor says the disintegration of China is underway.
I don't know if that is true right now. But I have long wondered about that outcome.
Michael Yon is on the ground there, FYI.
