As thousands of protesters continue to rally on the streets of Hong Kong, challenging Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders by calling for democratic reforms, much of the world anxiously awaits signs of how Beijing plans to react to their demands.
However, the anticipation is perhaps felt most keenly along China’s borders, both within the country and beyond, where the Chinese government’s authoritarian ways have been most apparent.
Among Tibetans and Uighurs, beleaguered ethnic minorities in China’s far west, there is hope that the protests draws international scrutiny to what these minorities say are Beijing’s broken promises for greater autonomy.
Photo: Bloomberg
The CCP’s refusal to talk with pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong, exiled activists add, also highlights a longstanding complaint among many ethnic minority groups in China — that the party relies on force over dialogue when dealing with politically delicate matters.
“We’ve seen this movie before, but when people stand up to the Chinese government in places like Lhasa or Urumqi and meet brutal resistance, there is no foreign media to show the world what’s happening,” Uighur-American lawyer and activist Nury Turke said. “The difference here is what’s happening in Hong Kong is taking place in real time, for all the world to see.”
Few places are watching the protests as closely as Taiwan which Beijing claims is part of China. Beijing’s refusal to grant Hong Kong the free elections that it had promised when the former British colony was returned to China in 1997 — a move that prompted the protests — has sharpened opposition to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his efforts to forge closer ties with China.
The “one country, two systems” framework, a political arrangement that has given Hong Kongers a raft of liberties unknown on the mainland, was first conceived of as a framework for reunification between Taiwan and China. Although relations have improved in recent years, the two sides have never signed a peace accord, and Beijing retains the option of taking Taiwan by force.
“As we closely follow events in Hong Kong, we have this feeling that in the not-so-distant future, we could very well end up like Hong Kong,” National Sun Yat-sen University professor Titus Chen (陳至潔) said. “Today it’s Hong Kong; tomorrow it might be Taiwan.”
No matter how the impasse is resolved, the struggle unfolding in Hong Kong is already a public-relations nightmare for Beijing. Outside China, scenes of peaceful student protesters sprayed with tear gas and bloodied by thugs have elicited unwelcome comparisons to the CCP’s response to 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
The protests in Hong Kong, playing out in real time on social media and beamed across the world by international media outlets, also threaten to complicate Beijing’s ambitious efforts to improve its image abroad. In recent days, rallies in Singapore, Seoul, Manila and elsewhere have drawn thousands of people expressing solidarity with demonstrators in Hong Kong.
South Korea’s Yonsei University professor of East Asian studies John Delury said his students, many of whom come from countries across Asia, have been paying close attention to the events in Hong Kong.
“I think the impact on young people across Asia could be much bigger than what Beijing anticipates,” he said, adding that Hong Kong’s role as regional purveyor of pop culture and a center for international finance was critical. “From a soft-power perspective, if anything remotely like what happened in 1989 occurs in Hong Kong, China can kiss its soft power goodbye for a couple of decades.”
The political tumult in Hong Kong has become a headache for Beijing at a time when party leaders are grappling with a host of challenges, from a slowing economy to diplomatic skirmishes with neighbors like Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Then there is mounting unrest in Xinjiang, in China’s far northwest and the simmering discontent in Tibetan areas that has prompted more than 130 people to take their own lives through self-immolation.
Advocates for Tibetans and Uighurs have been especially active on social media, drawing parallels between Hong Kong and the autonomous regions Beijing established for the nation’s largest ethnic minorities more than six decades ago.
“What we have in common with the people in Hong Kong is that we are all fighting for freedom and justice against an authoritarian regime that has broken its promises again and again,” Tibetan activist Tenzin Jigdal said in a telephone interview from Dharamsala, India, home to the Tibetan government in exile.
Most analysts agree that the protests in Hong Kong have already done significant damage to one of China’s core objectives: its effort to bring about reunification with Taiwan.
That effort has run into mounting resistance among the public, shown by the protests in March and April during which the student-led Sunflower movement occupied the legislature for nearly a month to protest the cross-strait sevice trade agreement.
Opponents said the measure, backed by the Ma administration, would have given Beijing too much influence over the nation’s economy, which is increasingly dependent on China.
The protesters succeeded in halting the trade pact, providing inspiration to the young activists who have led the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong.
In a move that stunned many Taiwanese, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last month reaffirmed Beijing’s determination to apply the “one country, two systems” framework to Taiwan. Given the events in Hong Kong, the announcement was seen as poorly timed and prompted an immediate rebuke from Ma, who has been struggling to ease widespread mistrust of Beijing among the electorate.
Sunflower movement participant Jiho Chang (張之豪) said the combination of Xi’s remarks and his government’s refusal to give Hong Kongers the right to freely elect their leader had finally put to rest the notion that Taiwan and Beijing might one day come together under the rubric of “one country, two systems.”
In a telephone interview, Chang laughed when asked if “one country, two systems” still had any resonance for Taiwanese.
“I’m very confident China would break its promises on anything,” he said. “China claims it wants to bring us closer together, but given what we’ve seen happening in Hong Kong, it has only succeeded in pushing us further apart.”
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