A friend with deep experience in China...

A friend with deep experience in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong writes:

Hong Kong. I can understand one thing. If I were born and bred in Hong Kong I would face the prospect of the territory coming under PRC rule with fear and loathing. And I would want to protest.

What I don't understand is how the protest has been taken over by extremists and violent thugs. Because this extreme violence can only end badly. I don't actually see Xi Jinping sending in the troops because he is on the back foot, both about HK and the brawl with Trump.

And people here in Taiwan who do China watching believe the leadership is split.But what I mean by ending badly is in the longer term. Henry Litton has written a couple of pieces with which I agree. He argues that if there is the slightest, remotest chance that Beijing might be inclined to extend the HK deal beyond 2047, it would only be if it thought the One Country Two Systems is working.

And with this violence, it is not working. So violent protest is actually sounding the death knell for HK in 2047.There is a reason why Beijing wants it to work is that in the longer term that original deal over HK is intended as the game plan for dealing with Taiwan. So, if it's not working for HK, what then for Taiwan? So, my take is that the violence must be stopped. And Australia and others should call for it to end.

What's your take?

My take:

Agree pretty much with all of this, as should be clear from what we’ve written on the blog in recent months. We specifically called for “Australia and others” to call out the violence.

We also like the idea of Henry Litton: to extend the One country Two systems beyond 2047.  At least that’s an achievable goal, whereas “independence” if that’s what’s meant by “freedom” is simply impossible. Meantime, we have our Seven Freedoms, they are real and meaningful, should not be mocked, and we want to preserve them.
So, like the NBA Tweet: we want to “Fight for Freedom; Stand with Hong Kong”.  It’s just that we don’t think black clad thugs is the way to maintain freedom, so we don’t stand with them.

Jing’s take, the long version:

1. The one country two systems was not for Taiwan (though it is currently commonly speculated).There is not much value for China to apply this model for Taiwan. The reason is that at the time of the handover, HK economy was more than 25% of China’s GDP. It was even bigger in 1984 when the joint declaration was signed. The key undertaking in the declaration is that Britain has to promise  (people tend to overlook that point) to keep HK economy stable till the handover. China wanted HK to remain prosperous for self interest- a gateway to the world, therefore, one country two systems. 

On the other hand, as China would never agree to Taiwan independence, Taiwan would eventually become an outpost for tourism and agriculture and manufacturing as an autonomous zone for China, similar to Macau as a casino attraction, but not same as HK. Taiwan thinks the one country two systems was aimed for them is a misjudgment. Taiwan system is not attractive for China to keep but HK’s common law framework (and its freest economy) is what China wants to keep. After all, common law represents a legal system for trade and commerce which would be very useful for China. 
2. Universal suffrage - Zhao Ziyang (who signed the declaration in 1984) was a keen political reformer and I do think at that time China thought the neoliberal based democratic system (with Chinese characteristics perhaps) would help China to open up and develop its economy. 

But the collapse of Soviet Union made them rethink about it - the Russian economy was collapsed based on the Western “experts advice“ mainly neoliberals - it’s GDP reduced to less than one third within a very short time - pretty much a free fall, and shops had no baby milk powder, life expediencies were shortened, plus ethnic conflicts and massive out flow of national wealth due to privatization before the development of a market economy (huge capital moved to US, UK and France etc) - as a result Russia from an advanced industrial country then to become a country relying on commodity and agriculture today (US sanctions accidentally helped (or forced) Russia to develop its agricultural..) Of course, there was also Tiananmen tragedy around same time that let the country almost falling into anarchy (Zhao was blamed for letting things out of control).. and the current political crisis in the West doesn’t help to bring confidence either. 

HK political opposition’s attempt to overthrow the government through youth violence will certainly cast a long shadow. (Personally, I don’t trust any of them because of all the lies they told and the scary tactics they used to gain political advantage). To remain prosperous and address the wealth gap (one of the key reasons for the unrest), HK has to be politically stable, it is simply a fact.. universal suffrage is a beautiful idea, the reality is that we are living in a very different world now (politically and economically) from the 80s. Perhaps we shouldn’t use HK as an experiment, especially in the geopolitically dangerous world, and risk to destroy what we have to prevent a make-believe bad future.. 

3. HK protests were very quickly turned into a regime change operation through violence and propaganda to undermine the police force (one of the finest in the world before the crisis), destroy the city’s infrastructure, attack the government and create a political stalemate (“revolution“), and the media is known by many for biased reporting. There are a lot of things to be said about all that. HK is very open and vulnerable to geopolitical conflicts.. amazingly the police recovered from the initial shock and has held up the last line of defense ever since. It is in control now. And my guess is that both the police and Carrie Lam realized earlier on what they are dealing with. To my own surprise, I started to respect her as she is trying everything to save HK while taking all the pressure and accusations from all sides. I truly believe that both the police and HK government (its key members) are working hard to defend HK and prevent it sliding into anarchy. I guess that it is why the police force is very united. They are apolitical and love HK. On the national day, the opposition (behind online anonymous forum) went out with full force calling for bloodshed (I saw these messages). It was dangerous time and police did an impossible job and succeeded in preventing them from achieving that goal (with properties damaged and people injured- unavoidable). Watching these vicious attacks on livestream was heart broken.  The situation now (on the surface is still chaotic) is stabilizing with more than 30,000 strong police force dealing with maximum a few hundreds (not well equipped) violent thugs. The regime change operation seems failed, and most key players already packed their bags. The opposition tried very hard to seek an injunction to block the mask ban but rejected by the high court. (Thanks to the legal framework).

4. HK today is around 2%-2.5% China’s GDP. Contrary to western media speculation, China is actually managing its economy reasonably well in the trade war and it has a group of very competent technocrats and a lot of policy tools to navigate through the upcoming global downturn. The maximum pressure Trump is trying to do ahead of the trade negotiation wouldn’t work because he is ill advised. China can wait out the HK chaos. Taken by surprise at the beginning, it quickly realized that HK “protests” was a regime change operation led by radicals and political oppositions supported by foreign powers. It has adjusted to the circumstances. The challenge is the aftermath- how to bring the divided and confused society back together. By the way, on Xi, I don’t think that he is in a weak position (just my observation). He is on his way to India and Pakistan..

5. China will continue to maintain the one country two systems in HK - Xi said it and he meant it. HK is part of the greater bay grand plan, a key part of China’s development strategy in this region. I think China’s strategy for Taiwan is a waiting game. Taiwan economy has been declining, and China today already has the military capabilities to block Taiwan strait, but it is not it’s priority to do anything about Taiwan. With Tsai Yingwen likely to remain in power, Taiwan will decline faster as she is incompetent. The overall Taiwan politics are hopeless and getting worse from what I can see and Tsai would also have to pay a price somehow for her involvements in funding these HK radicals etc. (HK immigration / customs had to introduce new measures to restrict “Taiwan suppliers” for the HK protests.. )