Nearly three weeks of anti-Beijing demonstrations in Hong Kong have apparently stalled, but only in the short term. Make no mistake, despite the seemingly successful strategy of Chinese and Hong Kong authorities to exhaust and divide the largely student-led protesters, we are nonetheless witnessing one of the 21st century’s most decisive confrontations.
Britain transferred Hong Kong to China in 1997 pursuant to a “Sino-British Joint Declaration,” guaranteeing Hong Kong “a high degree of autonomy” for 50 years as a distinctive “special administrative region” of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing would be responsible for foreign and defense policy, but the joint declaration required that Hong Kong continue functioning as a unique entity under the “one country, two systems” concept China itself originally proposed.
However, unfortunately China has systematically undermined the declaration, taking an ever-firmer grasp of “internal” Hong Kong affairs. China’s own economic growth has diminished the territory’s previous status as an economic colossus; Beijing is more confident it can act with impunity.
Hong Kong’s Basic Law elaborates the joint declaration’s intentions, providing ultimately for universal suffrage. However, it is vague on specifics regarding the electoral process. Therefore, after the handover, Hong Kong’s chief executives have all been selected by a committee essentially handpicked by Beijing, guaranteeing the outcome.
Nonetheless, Beijing agreed that the 2017 chief executive election would be through universal suffrage. However, it insisted that it screen and approve all potential candidates. This restriction obviously means that only nominations acceptable to Beijing will pass muster. So much for democracy.
For the Chinese Communist Party, this issue is an existential question. The ability to accept or reject candidates for Hong Kong chief executive is absolutely critical for Beijing. Compromising could sign the party’s death warrant as China’s ruling power.
If “anti-Beijing” candidates can contest and even win Hong Kong elections, the rest of China will immediately notice, possibly spreading the democratic “infection” throughout the country.
Similarly, the student demonstrators and their supporters (including many scattered around mainland China) see the issue as their last hope for representative government in Hong Kong. Beijing believes that the truly dominant opinion in Hong Kong is that business is more important than free elections. There is a generational gap on this issue.
Hong Kong’s older citizens remember the hardships they endured as refugees from the mainland before Hong Kong’s remarkable economic growth. Beijing hopes to persuade them to maintain their focus on business as their dominant goal rather than free government, which they certainly did not enjoy while prospering under British rule.
In retrospect, one can ask whether Beijing ever intended to honor the joint declaration.
Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) famously pressured then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1982, saying: “I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon.”
Indeed, “one country, two systems” was originally devised to reincorporate Taiwan into China — Taiwan emphatically rejected the concept, fearing that Beijing’s authoritarian government would strangle its nascent democracy, whatever was initially agreed.
However, as the Hong Kong protests escalated, the initial US response last month was pathetically weak.
The US consulate in Hong Kong issued a statement saying: “We do not take sides in the discussion of Hong Kong’s political development.”
While the US Department of State has since modified this embarrassing stance, US President Barack Obama’s administration is still hiding in the weeds, while Britain, Canada and Australia have all more vigorously supported the pro-democracy campaigners.
China asserts that foreign countries should keep their hands off because the status of Hong Kong’s elections is a purely internal matter. This is manifestly false. The Sino-British Joint Declaration is an international agreement, a treaty ratified by both parties and even filed with the UN. China’s failure to comply with the joint declaration’s foundational objectives and obligations will long be remembered.
While we have not yet seen Chinese tanks on Hong Kong streets reminiscent of Tiananmen Square in June 1989, crushing democratic dissent in Hong Kong undercuts Beijing’s credibility regarding all its international commitments, no matter the subject.
The US cannot abandon or remain neutral in the struggle of Hong Kongers to fully implement the joint declaration’s clear intentions. For the US to in effect ignore the push for truly free and fair elections in Hong Kong would signal to Beijing a free pass on whether China must honor its international agreements. This is not a matter of legal technicalities, but of fundamental political honesty between governments and peoples.
Washington’s weakness over Hong Kong will reverberate around the world, especially in the capitals of its adversaries. Declining US protection of its own interests in eastern and central Europe (exemplified by passivity against Russian aggression in Ukraine); its collapsing influence in the Middle East; its failure to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and its inability to counter China’s near-belligerent territorial claims in the South China Sea all point in the same direction. Hong Kong’s future will tell us a lot about that of the US.
John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was the US permanent representative to the UN and, previously, the US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. This article first appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers