Beijing has badly miscalculated in its charging, on Monday, of 47 Hong Kongers with supposed breaches of China’s Orwellian national security law.
This application of law is patently unjust, and everyone with objective eyes sees it as such.
As the South China Morning Post reports, prosecutors have asked that the 47 be held without bail. This detention is needed, authorities say, because the prosecutors and police require three further months to gather evidence. This is absurd. On the one hand, China insists that these 47 represent some of the most serious threats to its national security of anyone, anywhere. On the other hand, China says it needs months to be able to prove that threat. Question: If the threat is so serious and urgent, why can’t China pony up the evidence?
Answer: because the evidence doesn’t exist. The 47 are on trial not because they have threatened national security, but because they have had the gall to stand up for their basic human rights. Rights, it should be noted, that China had promised, under treaty law, to respect until 2047.
The hundreds of Hong Kongers who protested on Monday know this. They recognize that China is using the national security law not to protect its national security but rather to silence dissent. Beijing fears not what those 47 will do, but what they will say. It fears that speech because that speech might ripple into more Hong Kong hearts and minds, and then into the mainland. Xi Jinping and the Standing Committee know that if people start demanding a choice between communist autocracy and alternative political offerings, they’ll have a rather significant problem.
But Xi has a specific Hong Kong problem within that broader political problem.
Where on the mainland, Xi can disappear difficult voices such as Ren Zhiqiang, that’s not possible in Hong Kong. At least not yet. The appearance of numerous Western diplomats at Monday’s court hearings testifies to the issue. The eyes of the world are on Hong Kong. Xi knows that Western multinationals, especially banks, wish to retain their Hong Kong investments. He also knows that Western leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will tolerate his Hong Kong policy, just as long as Chinese investments keep flowing into their domestic economies. But Xi also knows that if he pushes too far, too fast, he’ll risk an international political and economic snapback that sees Hong Kong lose its investment appeal. Such a development would fundamentally undermine Xi’s ambition of a Hong Kong that exists simultaneously in a docile drone-like state of compliance and as a magnet for international capital investment. That double-sided interest is the centerpiece of Xi’s geopolitical dream of a modern, globally dominant China.
The risks of miscalculation are increasingly significant.
With the European Parliament warning that it won’t ratify a recently agreed to European Union-China trade deal unless China improves its human rights conduct, Xi must walk a tightrope. This tension explains why China’s state propaganda machine is hyperventilating. The Global Times, for example, is warning that the 47 will find themselves crucified for putting Xi in a complicated position. Its editorial screamed that “the long history of the Chinese nation will nail them to the column of humiliation as traitors.”
The United States should increase the pressure on Xi. China’s actions in Hong Kong represent not just a breach of treaty law but a desperate gamble to subjugate innocent people. The best way to mitigate Hong Kong’s hardships is to make those hardships ripple back against Xi’s broader international interests.
