Possibility of Hong Kong Protests Spreading to Chinese Mainland

Yesterday protesters (see "Hong Kong Protesters Storm Legislature, Dividing the Movement" by Javier Hernandez) occupied Hong Kong's Legislative Council building for three hours, breaking glass, spraying paint and smashing office equipment. Most of the protesters had dispersed by the time the police reclaimed the building.

In the aftermath, the protest movement that has mobilized to defeat legislation allowing for extradition to the Chinese mainland is being declared effectively over. Hernandez concludes his dispatch:

“This movement has reached its end,” said Tian Feilong, the executive director of a research institute on Hong Kong policy in Beijing, citing the divisions between lawmakers and more extreme protesters. “It will cool down by itself.”

The political crisis might prompt officials to place even greater pressure on Beijing’s formidable network of sympathetic business executives, media outlets and civil servants in Hong Kong, experts say, such as by threatening employees of mainland companies whose children participate in the protests.

“Those elements will be pushed to the max to elicit greater compliance from the population,” said Victor Shih, an associate professor of political economy at the University of California, San Diego.

The movement now enters a period of uncertainty. Arrests are likely. Divisions are growing among protesters. Without a recognized set of leaders, the demonstrations lack a sense of focus.

Victoria Hui, an associate professor who studies Hong Kong politics at the University of Notre Dame, said a successful protest required some level of coordination, even if it was decentralized.

“It cannot be leaderless,” she said. “They need better coordination. It’s not worth it to court arrest.”

Peter Symonds of World Socialist Web Site sees the Hong Kong protests differently, not confined merely to the issue of extradition but encompassing housing and inequality that could spark protests on the mainland.

Writing in the South China Morning Post last Friday, commentator Albert Cheng cautiously advised Beijing and its Hong Kong administration that in order to end the protests it had to address the underlying social issues. “The government’s incompetence in tackling the city’s long-standing problems, such as the wealth gap and lack of upward mobility, has generated despair among the younger generation, prompting them to take to the streets,” he wrote.

The continuing protests are creating a political crisis, not just for the Lam administration but for Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing. The CCP leadership is afraid that the political unrest in Hong Kong will spill into the Chinese mainland despite its efforts to block out any news of the protests.

The upheaval compounds the mounting problems and dilemmas confronting the CCP bureaucracy, which faces Washington’s aggressive trade and economic war and continuing US military provocations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. The Chinese economy is continuing to slow, with growth rates well below the 8 percent benchmark that was long touted as necessary to avoid rising unemployment and social unrest.

Reflecting the deep-seated anxieties in Chinese ruling circles, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang warned the National People’s Congress in March: “There is still public dissatisfaction in many areas, such as education, healthcare, elderly care, housing, food and drug safety, and income distribution. Last year saw a number of public safety incidents and major workplace incidents.”

The CCP regime fears a political movement of the working class. It went to great lengths to black out any mention of the 30th anniversary of the June 4-5 Tiananmen Square massacre, which was aimed at crushing the mass opposition of Chinese workers to the consequences of the regime’s pro-market policies. Any mass movement of workers today would erupt on a far wider scale than in 1989.

The potential for the Hong Kong protests to trigger instability throughout China, and elsewhere, may account for the rather muted response in Western capitals. The European Union appealed for restraint and dialogue to defuse the protests, while Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, notorious for his militarist views, simply called on China “to adhere to its international obligations.”

The Western mainstream press exists substantially in its present form to demonize China. Now that it has its golden ticket, it's conflicted about using it.