Protesters in Hong Kong test the limits of Beijing’s restraint

Tony Karon says a tactical compromise may be the answer in Hong Kong.

An Anti-Occupy Central protester amid pro-democracy protesters in Mong Kok, Hong Kong. Dennis M Sabangan / EPA

“Hong Kong = Gaza” read a placard photographed and tweeted last week as tens of thousands of mostly young protesters besieged that city’s commercial and administrative centres to demand elections free of Beijing’s interference. That’s a comparison so ridiculous that it actually draws attention to the relative restraint exercised by the authorities. Nobody had been killed in more than a week of street protests at the time of writing, and no serious injuries had been reported at the hands of the authorities. The crowd control tactics of Hong Kong’s police last week made their counterparts in Greece and Spain look brutal.

Indeed, Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed city authorities appeared to have quickly learnt the political peril of repressive tactics, after starting off on a harsher note. The police used tear gas on young protesters on Saturday, September 27, but rather than tamp down the demonstrations, the crackdown actually fuelled them. Tens of thousands more Hong Kongers of all ages came out to protest at the heavy handed response, and the protesters began demanding the resignation of chief executive CY Leung.

Responding violently to legitimate protests often triggers far wider protests against those repressive measures themselves, and escalates the demands of the protests into a broad challenge to the legitimacy of the authority that ordered the crackdown.

As massive crowds gathered to support the students and demand Mr Leung’s resignation, the Beijing-backed authority in Hong Kong adroitly dialled down its repression. Riot police were withdrawn last Monday, ceding the streets to the protesters for most of the past week. Mr Leung made clear he had no intention of resigning, but offered to have his deputy meet leaders of the protests to seek a compromise. Offering talks was also a way of working the differences between the hardline student organisations and the older and more temperate activists of the “Occupy” movement.

If Hong Kong authorities seemed mindful of the need to bring the wider public back onside, so, too, did protest leaders. They quickly abandoned their own threat to occupy Mr Leung’s office if he hadn’t quit by midnight Thursday – that would have required breaching police lines, potentially casting the protesters as aggressors. Movement leaders even sought to restrain some in their own camp, and initially accepted the offer of dialogue despite considerable scepticism of its sincerity.

Friday brought a wild card – the democracy activists were attacked by other residents angry at the economic disruption created by the protests. The police, heavily outnumbered, were accused of allowing the violent counter-protesters free rein, although they later arrested a number of them – and revealed that they included known operatives of the triads, the territory’s legendary organised crime families. The triads have long since branched out into legitimate ventures, and like much of Hong Kong’s business elite are more than happy to keep on making money under Beijing’s light hand on the reins of power. But many of the counter-protesters were working-class folk angry at the disruption of their hourly-wage earning capacity.

The attacks prompted student leaders to cancel talks with Mr Leung’s administration, and there was a renewed wave of public sympathy for the protesters. The emergence of this “third force” does, however, allow the Hong Kong police to reposition themselves, acting to clear the streets of both protesters and counter-protesters to head off the spectre of chaos.

On Saturday, Mr Leung made clear that he expects the streets to be sufficiently cleared by today to allow government employees to return to their offices.

The right to free elections – as opposed to ones in which the limited slate of candidates has been pre-vetted by Beijing – may be a legitimate one, but it’s enjoyed in no other part of China. And protest leaders know there’s very little chance Beijing will yield.

Beijing isn’t about to put the stability of its entire system on the line to accommodate Hong Kong’s desires, but their campaign poses a different problem for China. Beijing had hoped to use the stability of Hong Kong to sell its “One Country, Two Systems” model to Taiwan, as inducement to restore Chinese sovereignty there. The events of the past week have put paid to that charm offensive.

China’s leaders have obviously also learnt the lesson of Tiananmen Square, where firing on peaceful demonstrators left a lingering distrust that has continued in sections of its population to this day. Even for an authoritarian regime, there are smarter and more effective ways to clear the streets – and one is to simply wait them out.

At the same time, though, because Hong Kong is part of China, Beijing’s leaders can’t afford to be seen to be overly accommodating of mass public dissent. They wouldn’t want the Tibetans, the Uighurs and other malcontent minorities getting ideas. Moreover, president Xi Jinping made many enemies in China’s political elite during his sharp-elbowed rise to the top, and being seen to be either too indulgent or too ham-fisted in his handling of Hong Kong could cost him dearly in the opaque political game inside the corridors of power.

Today could prove decisive in deciding the denouement of this protest wave. What’s increasingly clear, however, is that this round will end with the current political arrangements largely still intact. Less clear is whether the streets will clear peacefully, with some form of tactical compromise leaders on both sides could claim as progress – or in a spate of violent turmoil that poisons the well of Hong Kong politics for another generation.

Tony Karon teaches in the graduate programme at the New School in New York