President Trump has been widely criticized for his failure to support the historic pro-democracy movement currently raging in Hong Kong. Although the president’s statements have been confusing and contradictory, he and the protesters in Hong Kong have far more in common than meets the eye.
Trump came to office promising a foreign policy based on concrete U.S. national interests, not soaring human rights rhetoric or careless military interventionism. At the same time, having led a historic political movement to win the White House, he has an instinctive understanding of the large-scale galvanization of a people’s political aspirations.
What this means for Hong Kong is that even though Trump will not mouth support for the protesters, he respects the scale of their movement.
For 15 consecutive weeks, massive crowds in Hong Kong have rallied for more autonomy and more democratization in the “one country, two systems” rubric that governs their relationship with China. On many occasions, protesters have sung the American national anthem and waved the American flag. Two weekends ago, thousands even marched to the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong to seek American backing while calling on Trump to “liberate” their city.
However sincere and passionate the protesters are, Hong Kong is not Trump’s to liberate. The city is legally and indisputably part of China. As Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has indicated, the United States is not going to invade.
Protesters have also called for the passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, a bipartisan bill making its way through Congress. The legislation would require, among other things, that Washington evaluate annually Hong Kong’s political autonomy under Beijing’s rule and revoke the city’s preferential trading status if autonomy is lacking.
Should such revocation ever take place, it would effectively render Hong Kong just another Chinese city and subject it to measures such as the current tariffs under the ongoing U.S.-China trade war. It is hard to see how that would be good for Hong Kong’s economy, which has already been battered by months of mass protests featuring road blockades, vandalism, arson, destruction of public property, and violent clashes between protesters and police.
While the bill reflects the preferences of congressional lawmakers with traditional foreign policy outlooks, Trump has never been shy to buck convention. Throughout the summer, he meandered from telling Chinese President Xi Jinping that he would not intervene should China proceed with a military crackdown, to suggesting a personal meeting with Xi to resolve the conflict without violence.
He went from insisting that the protests should not derail U.S.-China trade talks to warning Beijing that a military crackdown would derail any potential trade agreement. “Of course China wants to make a deal,” Trump tweeted. “Let them work humanely with Hong Kong first!”
In some ways, it was inevitable that Trump would end up there. Freedom and human rights have not been a hallmark of his administration. Indeed, when presenting his National Security Strategy in December 2017, he said, “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone.” That was a drastic and intentional departure from former President George W. Bush’s promise to end tyranny in the 21st century.
It is no surprise that Trump has not been waving the American flag back at the protesters in Hong Kong, but that does not mean they have failed to impress him. Though frequently derided for having a soft spot for dictators, Trump has not shied away from challenging them in the pursuit of his foreign policy goals.
He has also made clear that humanitarian atrocities involving innocents do not get a free pass from his administration. Soon after assuming office, Trump launched 59 missiles against Syria after Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons. He was moved to act in part by the death of “beautiful babies.”
In Hong Kong, there is a real possibility that Beijing would send in the People’s Liberation Army, currently amassed across the border, and open fire like the government did against student activists clamoring for democracy in Tiananmen Square in 1989. That would kill many more people than chemical weapons did in Syria. Images of those dead and wounded would certainly create an impetus for Trump and his White House to halt trade negotiations or business as usual with Beijing.
A telling sign of where Trump stands is his amazement at the size of the Hong Kong protests, which have been millions strong on numerous occasions.
“Those are serious crowds — the Hong Kong crowds,” Trump has marveled.
In that observation lies Trump’s likely answer to any military action Beijing might be pondering: Whatever he may have said to the contrary, Trump will not condone a military crackdown.
This is a president who eagerly brags about the crowd sizes at his own political rallies since he began running for public office in 2015. Detractors call him a narcissist, but he has described himself as merely a messenger of the American electorate.
Indeed, Trump has proudly declared that through his political movement, Americans have become “the rulers of their nation again” and “rediscovered [their] voice and reclaimed ownership of this nation and its destiny.”
In Hong Kong, Trump sees the massive crowds. Instinctively, he understands that Hong Kongers are discovering their voices and reclaiming ownership of their destiny.
The city is not his to liberate, but he no doubt recognizes the message and the messengers in Hong Kong’s massive crowds, which are even bigger than the crowds at Trump rallies.
Trump may not be stirred by soaring rhetoric in the name of democracy, but he is intimately familiar with the leadership and defiance of a political movement that challenges the status quo. Beijing should not forget that.
Ying Ma is the author of Chinese Girl in the Ghetto, which was released in audiobook in 2018. During the 2016 election, she served as the deputy director of the Committee for American Sovereignty, a pro-Trump super PAC. Follow her on Twitter: @GZtoGhetto.
