Hong Kong protests: Is Beijing ready to step in?

     

As tension rises between Hong Kong’s police and student activists barricaded inside university campuses, Chinese President Xi Jinping has reiterated mainland support for Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, saying that the priority was to stop the violence, Foreign Policy reports.

China has accused Western countries of foreign interference. Meanwhile, U.S. senators are seeking (HT: Foreign Policy) to quickly pass legislation – the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act – that would scrutinize Hong Kong’s special treatment by the United States and impose sanctions on officials.

The mainland’s Communist authorities have hinted at the possibility of intervention. The latest warning came from Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times, the South China Morning Post reports.

HK Tech Crunch

Hu told the city’s police force: “Behind you there are not only the [patriotic] Hong Kong public and the nation, but also the country’s paramilitary police and the People’s Liberation Army Hong Kong garrison, who can enter Hong Kong and offer support in accordance with the Basic Law when needed.”

But while Beijing has a comprehensive strategy on how to deal with Hong Kong in the medium to long term, it lacks a clear solution in the short term to shut down the protests effectively, said Adam Ni, a China specialist at Macquarie University in Sydney.

“We’ve seen a trajectory of increasing rhetoric and tough line response from Beijing, but I think we’re still some way off from Beijing actually sending in the security forces as it’s threatened on multiple occasions implicitly or explicitly,” he told the SCMP.

The vast majority of Hong Kong’s protesters are peaceful and they are looking to the world to assist, Benedict Rogers and Johnny Patterson of Hong Kong Watch, write for TIME:

They focus on the Human Rights and Democracy Act because it contains powerful provisions which would strengthen their hand. It guarantees that pro-democracy protestors who are arrested do not find their applications for visas blocked after a political trial; it ensures that the violators of human rights bear the consequences of their actions through the application of Magnitsky sanctions; and it sends a clear signal to China that it cannot erode the city’s autonomy and freedoms while reaping the benefits, by strengthening State Department scrutiny of Hong Kong’s freedoms.

Hong Kong’s protests have stirred confrontations in various places around the world in recent weeks, usually involving patriotic Chinese students confronting pro-democracy groups, Reuters reports. At Seoul National University, for example, students have created their own “Lennon Walls” – mosaics of Post-it notes named after the John Lennon Wall in communist-controlled Prague in the 1980s – which have appeared in Hong Kong.

With protests now in their sixth month, Hong Kong faces another challenge: a District Council election scheduled for Nov. 24. These low-level elections are in the spotlight, given the escalating unrest in Hong Kong and the protesters’ demands for universal suffrage, notes Maggie Shum, research associate at the Keogh School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, and a native of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s government shows few signs of a reconciliatory approach, and public polls indicate continued public support for the protesters, despite the increase in confrontations between police and protesters, the former National Endowment for Democracy research intern writes for the Post’s Monkey Cage blog:

Many analysts see the District Council elections as a test for Beijing and Hong Kong authorities’ political will to uphold the “one country, two systems” arrangement and hold free and fair elections at the district level. Hong Kong voters will probably view any tampering with the election schedule or process as an attempt to erode one of the few democratic pillars left in Hong Kong’s political system.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email