OPINION:
Last week’s news focused on the potential Ebola threat to the United States, President Obama’s latest uncomfortable meeting with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the baseball playoffs and the rampant incompetence of the Secret Service.
The real story, however, was unfolding not in Africa or in an Atlanta elevator, but in Hong Kong where thousands, then tens of thousands, and by week’s end hundreds of thousands of city residents were in the streets ready to stare down the forces of Hong Kong’s police and, if necessary, China’s Peoples’ Liberation Army. They’re still there as I write this, and China’s rulers don’t seem to know what to do with 200,000 street protestors who might well represent an existential threat to the survival of the world’s largest totalitarian state.
When Britain turned Hong Kong over to Beijing in 1997, the Communist mainland government promised not to interfere with the freedom that had made the city one of the most prosperous places on earth. Given the core Communist hostility to capitalism and free enterprise, many doubted China could or had the will to keep such a pledge. Turning Hong Kong over to the Chinese Communist Central Committee seemed a little like turning a profitable whorehouse over to Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.
Others argued that that Beijing knew that Hong Kong was truly the goose that was laying golden eggs and would tolerate almost anything for those eggs. At the time, incorporating Hong Kong into China increased the mainland’s GNP by as much as 15%.
Beijing tried to square the circle by announcing what became known as the “one country, two systems” solution which was to make everyone happy. The Hong Kong formula could even be a model for a solution to the problem of Taiwan, which like Hong Kong prizes its freedom and economic prosperity. Policymakers in Beijing and some in Washington thought they had hit upon a way out for everyone.
The problem the mainland faced then and today is that political and economic freedom is intertwined. The British didn’t let Hong Kong’s residents pick their rulers, but they didn’t interfere with the daily freedoms so important to the island and its success. Beijing promised to rule in much the same way until 2017 when the city would for the first time ever be able to elect its own leaders, which would in essence, make it a semi-autonomous part of China with far more freedom than other provinces.
Hong Kong is far less important economically to Beijing than twenty years ago. Now less than 3% of China’s GNP is attributable to Hong Kong and with 2017 fast approaching, the boys in Beijing decided the political costs of upholding their 1997 pledge outweigh the economic benefits of keeping it. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are most at risk when rulers start to give in to demands for reform and liberalization, and at some point Beijing decided backtrack on the twenty-year- old agreement lest others within their empire get the idea that they too might be granted more freedom and autonomy.
The announcement that in 2017, Hong Kong voters will only be allowed to vote for candidates vetted and pre-approved by Beijing forced the city’s residents to realize that the dream they were living was just that … a dream. Denial was no longer possible, because China’s rulers were letting them know not so subtly that they have the power to treat them any way they want.
Life in Hong Kong has always included open debate and demonstrations are a part of life there. So the demonstrators last week were taken aback when Hong Kong police treated them as the enemy, using tear gas and pepper spray to disperse them. The decision to use force backfired on the authorities with as something like 20% of Hong Kong’s residents took to the streets to express their outrage, demand the firing of the official who ordered the police into action and insist that Beijing give up the power to select the candidates who will be allowed to run in 2017.
The police have since backed off, but are clearly preparing for action although the boys in Beijing don’t seem to know quite what to do. They cannot give in, but fear the domestic and international consequences of taking the tough action that might be needed to stuff the genie of freedom back in its bottle. They are censoring everything they can coming out of Hong Kong lest the virus spread to the mainland while meanwhile insisting the whole affair is a put-up job by “outsiders.”
Beijing’s long term problem is that the freedom virus, like the Ebola virus plaguing the rest of the world is loose within its territory. If it spreads to the mainland, Chinese Communism could go the way of the Communist dictatorships of Europe or the USSR. That may not happen now but could eventually, and that possibility is not something they can even begin to contemplate and makes what’s going on in Hong Kong the biggest story out there.
Beijing may have erased Tiananmen Square from their history books, but the consequences must be keeping them lying awake nights wondering how much worse this can get.
David Keene is the Opinion Editor of The Washington Times.
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