“We’re all in this together,” proclaims Beijing’s coronavirus propaganda machine to the world.
Of course, in reality, Beijing is only in this to save its ruling Communist Party.
Take the arrest this weekend of more than a dozen Hong Kong democracy activists. Those detained are accused of engaging in “unlawful assemblies” last fall, and their number includes Hong Kong Democratic Party founder and barrister Martin Lee, entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, and former 17-year city legislator Margaret Ng. But, while these three have long been central to the Hong Kong democracy movement, only Lai was a regular street protester.
So, why arrest them now? Beijing’s Ministry of State Security intelligence service has been harassing these activists for many months. It has been concerned about galvanizing the protesters and the international community by actually arresting them. The coronavirus pandemic has changed that calculation. China believes the world is too distracted to put up much of a fuss over this crackdown, and, having failed in its ludicrous attempts to brainwash Hongkongers, Beijing sees aggression as its last recourse. This joins with attacks on protesters late last year and the February appointment of high-level party apparatchik and Christian-purger Xia Baolong as head of China’s Macau and Hong Kong office.
So, what we’re seeing here is essentially an effort to decapitate the protest movement, which the Communist Party views as an increasingly critical threat. After all, the recent vote result in Hong Kong showed that, where China’s own citizens are given a chance to endorse a Western democratic model or the Communist Party model, the verdict was 87% in favor of the former. Were that sentiment to spread to the mainland, the party would face an existential crisis.
Beijing wants to stamp out that threat as soon as possible.
In doing so, Beijing cares nothing that its aggression breaches international human rights law and its own treaty commitments under the Sino-British accord, breaches that should encourage our skepticism of China’s other international commitments, such as on climate change. Xi simply wants the protesters gone. Fast. The coronavirus provides a useful cover for that action occurring sooner rather than later.
But the Communist Party faces a great challenge. Those Hongkongers it arrests for opposing its agenda are just the tip of the iceberg. As we’ve seen for more than a year, many hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers aren’t willing to sacrifice their future at the Communist Party’s altar.
If Beijing wants Hong Kong’s submission, it will have to bulldoze it into the ground. Unfortunately, it might just do so.
