China's handling of massive demonstrations in Hong Kong is in the riot-police stage, but could escalate to military force on the scale that Chinese rulers unleashed in 1989 to put down a pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, says an Asia scholar with the Heritage Foundation.
"In the long term what I do fear is that Beijing is going to say they will do whatever it takes to keep Hong Kong in line," Dean Cheng of Heritage's Asian Studies Center told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV Tuesday.
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Police attacked marchers over the weekend, and Hong Kong officials — who ultimately answer to Beijing — have ordered demonstrators to disperse.
But the
student-powered mass protest has not subsided, and tens of thousands still occupy the major thoroughfares of the wealthy island enclave, rallying against a new set of local election rules handed down by the mainland Chinese government.
Protestors charge that communist China is renegging on its promise to allow the semi-autonomos city-state and global financial center to govern itself.
Cheng sees an escalating standoff.
"The people in Hong Kong are certainly making themselves heard…. The problem is, Beijing has been very, very loud in saying they're not interested," said Cheng.
"Just before the announcement of new rules regarding elections — which is what precipitated all this — the authorities in Beijing released a white paper that said the PR's [People's Republic of China representatives] who run Hong Kong will run it as they see fit," said Cheng. "In the last 24 hours, Beijing again has said that they are not interested in negotiating. We are heading towards a crisis point, as huge crowds now appear in downtown Hong Kong."
The confrontation in Hong Kong coincides with a clampdown on media back home, said Cheng.
"We know that at this point they have instituted a lot of online censorship to try and limit the seepage of news out of Hong Kong into the mainland for several reasons," he said of China's rulers. "One, is to keep the population within the greater mainland from protesting.
"But second of all is because, once you open that door then there are a whole host of issues that can also cause [mainland Chinese] people to take to the street, whether in Shanghai or Beijing — everything from consumer product safety to corruption issues to lack of representation," said Cheng.
For now, China's rulers are letting Hong Kong authorities manage the crisis on the ground, conscious that a more aggressive response could rattle the world's global financial markets and blow back on China's own economy.
The risk of destabilizing Hong Kong "is a huge concern and in fact it's arguably one of the reasons why the authorities in Beijing thus far have limited their intervention," said Cheng.
"The question is going to be where the Hong Kong authorities come down?" he said. "How are they going to walk that very fine line between the demands of the protestors for true democratic representation and the pressure from Beijing to keep everything in line — making money and not making any political waves?"
Cheng said that what China wants is to bring Hong Kong into alignment with Beijing's hybrid of free-market economics and strict one-party rule.
"When we think about where Beijing is these days, when we use the term 'communist,' it's not so much the state running the dominant economy, so much as the old Leninist idea of a 'vanguard party': There is not going to be a lot of political dissent; there won't be competing elections and competing candidates.
"That, more than anything else, is what Beijing is signaling Hong Kong: You're free to vote, but you're going to vote among a slate of people we select for you," said Cheng.
For now, Chinese and Hong Kong authorities are treating the demonstrations as a crowd-control problem.
"The good news is, the Chinese have created something called the People's Armed Police, which is more trained in riot suppression with water cannon and rubber bullets," said Cheng. "We may not see an initial move that will lead to bloodshed, but rather more contusions and concussions."
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