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| Can Hong Kong Avoid Becoming Tiananmen? | Can Hong Kong Avoid Becoming Tiananmen? |
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| Thirty years ago, on May 19, 1989, Zhao Ziyang, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, stood in Tiananmen Square. It was 5 in the morning and Zhao, exhausted, holding a loudspeaker, addressed student demonstrators, thousands of whom were on Day 7 of a hunger strike. “Students, we came too late,” he said. “I am sorry. Sorry. Whatever you say and criticize about us is deserved.” | |
| Zhao knew that Deng Xiaoping, the nation’s supreme leader, had planned to order the army to enter Tiananmen Square. Hoping to avert disaster, he begged students to give up their hunger strike. “All the vigor that you have as young people,” he said, “we understand as we, too, were young once. We, too, protested and we, too, laid our bodies on the railway tracks without considering the consequences. Finally, I ask again sincerely that you calmly think about what happens from now on. A lot of things can be resolved.” | |
| The next day, martial law was declared and Zhao was placed under house arrest. Fifteen days later, the People’s Liberation Army entered Tiananmen Square, leaving carnage in its wake. Zhao died in 2005. His distinguished career has been erased inside China, his name deleted from public records and his face wiped from photographs. | The next day, martial law was declared and Zhao was placed under house arrest. Fifteen days later, the People’s Liberation Army entered Tiananmen Square, leaving carnage in its wake. Zhao died in 2005. His distinguished career has been erased inside China, his name deleted from public records and his face wiped from photographs. |
| At its most powerful moments, the 1989 demonstration brought together people from every stratum, bridging factory workers, state media, Beijing police, university and high school students, grandparents, professors and artists. Rock concerts filled the nights. A Democracy University offering free lectures was set up beside the newly raised Goddess of Democracy. Beijingers brought food and water to the demonstrators, and student marshals kept the peace, organized logistics, maintenance and cleaning of the public space. Professors and intellectuals, able to provide historical context, came to Tiananmen Square to advise on strategy, safety and vision. | At its most powerful moments, the 1989 demonstration brought together people from every stratum, bridging factory workers, state media, Beijing police, university and high school students, grandparents, professors and artists. Rock concerts filled the nights. A Democracy University offering free lectures was set up beside the newly raised Goddess of Democracy. Beijingers brought food and water to the demonstrators, and student marshals kept the peace, organized logistics, maintenance and cleaning of the public space. Professors and intellectuals, able to provide historical context, came to Tiananmen Square to advise on strategy, safety and vision. |
| The 1989 demonstrations were, in essence, an experiment in self-government because students understood that the way they protested would come to represent the demands themselves. | The 1989 demonstrations were, in essence, an experiment in self-government because students understood that the way they protested would come to represent the demands themselves. |
| On the night of June 3, 1989, Liu Xiaobo and three other intellectuals, rushed back and forth between the protesters and the army, desperately negotiating safe passage for thousands of university students holding out in Tiananmen Square. Without their heroic interventions, those protesters faced certain annihilation. Liu never forgot those days and nights in the Square. His Charter 08 asked the government to uphold its own constitution. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and died in 2017 while serving a lengthy prison sentence. | On the night of June 3, 1989, Liu Xiaobo and three other intellectuals, rushed back and forth between the protesters and the army, desperately negotiating safe passage for thousands of university students holding out in Tiananmen Square. Without their heroic interventions, those protesters faced certain annihilation. Liu never forgot those days and nights in the Square. His Charter 08 asked the government to uphold its own constitution. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and died in 2017 while serving a lengthy prison sentence. |
| In the absence of a representative system of government, the Chinese Communist Party derives its moral legitimacy from acting in the best interests of the nation, with the approval of the people. Then and now, the greatest threats to the party are mass demonstrations that cut across class and political lines. | In the absence of a representative system of government, the Chinese Communist Party derives its moral legitimacy from acting in the best interests of the nation, with the approval of the people. Then and now, the greatest threats to the party are mass demonstrations that cut across class and political lines. |
| This is not 1989 and Hong Kong is not Beijing, yet young, unarmed students are once again in danger of repression by Chinese military power. Pro-Beijing politicians have irresponsibly compared demonstrators to terrorists. Young people, desperately concerned for an economic future inseparable from their constitutional rights, are putting their lives at risk. | This is not 1989 and Hong Kong is not Beijing, yet young, unarmed students are once again in danger of repression by Chinese military power. Pro-Beijing politicians have irresponsibly compared demonstrators to terrorists. Young people, desperately concerned for an economic future inseparable from their constitutional rights, are putting their lives at risk. |
| Hong Kong’s protesters must be persuasive, flexible and unified, knowing they can never win by force. They need the greatest number of residents to support a specific and obtainable goal. Theirs is a delicate position, requiring a tactician’s genius. The region is a zone of transition between China proper and the Chinese sphere of influence, and its people reflect the complexity, ruptures and transformative changes of the Chinese world. A politically free Hong Kong can benefit all sides, if only those with influence in Beijing can articulate this role and its cascading benefits. | Hong Kong’s protesters must be persuasive, flexible and unified, knowing they can never win by force. They need the greatest number of residents to support a specific and obtainable goal. Theirs is a delicate position, requiring a tactician’s genius. The region is a zone of transition between China proper and the Chinese sphere of influence, and its people reflect the complexity, ruptures and transformative changes of the Chinese world. A politically free Hong Kong can benefit all sides, if only those with influence in Beijing can articulate this role and its cascading benefits. |
| The international community has a separate duty. It is counterproductive to call for an independent Hong Kong or to further inflame the rhetoric. But we should be supporting — urgently and in our own streets — their right to freedom of assembly, association and expression, and to have an independent judiciary. These rights should never have been left at risk by the handover agreement signed in 1997, when the region was returned to China. Hong Kong was given and received as a colony, with all the disrespect to its residents that this implies. Without these rights, residents, simply by attempting to debate and create an equitable, stable future, will pay a terrible price. | The international community has a separate duty. It is counterproductive to call for an independent Hong Kong or to further inflame the rhetoric. But we should be supporting — urgently and in our own streets — their right to freedom of assembly, association and expression, and to have an independent judiciary. These rights should never have been left at risk by the handover agreement signed in 1997, when the region was returned to China. Hong Kong was given and received as a colony, with all the disrespect to its residents that this implies. Without these rights, residents, simply by attempting to debate and create an equitable, stable future, will pay a terrible price. |
| China’s strict censorship and control of the media has allowed mainland news sites to propagate the false narrative that Hong Kong residents are under siege from a foreign-controlled cell of hooligans and fifth elements. It is a dangerous and cynical lie, used time and again by military powers to justify violent intervention. | China’s strict censorship and control of the media has allowed mainland news sites to propagate the false narrative that Hong Kong residents are under siege from a foreign-controlled cell of hooligans and fifth elements. It is a dangerous and cynical lie, used time and again by military powers to justify violent intervention. |
| Chinese language, poetics and philosophy are part of Hong Kong’s soul. The questions confronting it have no easy answers: how will Hong Kong maintain itself, neither jeopardizing the Chinese state nor being jeopardized by it? How can Hong Kong — and the separate political and legal system it was promised by Britain and China — survive in this rapidly changing global order? | Chinese language, poetics and philosophy are part of Hong Kong’s soul. The questions confronting it have no easy answers: how will Hong Kong maintain itself, neither jeopardizing the Chinese state nor being jeopardized by it? How can Hong Kong — and the separate political and legal system it was promised by Britain and China — survive in this rapidly changing global order? |
| This question concerns all of us. Illegitimate power relies exclusively on force. China is a sophisticated and influential state, yet satellite images show it has amassed what appear to be over 100 armored personnel vehicles several miles from Hong Kong, as if force is the only politics it knows. | This question concerns all of us. Illegitimate power relies exclusively on force. China is a sophisticated and influential state, yet satellite images show it has amassed what appear to be over 100 armored personnel vehicles several miles from Hong Kong, as if force is the only politics it knows. |
| In the years since the handover, China’s rise had been dramatic. The economic infrastructure connecting Hong Kong and China is profound. In the next few decades, when China’s Greater Bay Area project is expected to be finalized, Hong Kong will be part of a megalopolis that will include Macau, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and seven other Chinese cities, comprising 70 million people and producing 37 percent of China’s exports. The Greater Bay Area does not seem compatible with the “one country, two systems” principle. The future demands ingenuity and, most of all, respect for Hong Kong’s uniquely nuanced identity. Over 150 years of history have shown that economic security and constitutional rights are possible in Hong Kong without posing a threat to the Chinese system. | In the years since the handover, China’s rise had been dramatic. The economic infrastructure connecting Hong Kong and China is profound. In the next few decades, when China’s Greater Bay Area project is expected to be finalized, Hong Kong will be part of a megalopolis that will include Macau, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and seven other Chinese cities, comprising 70 million people and producing 37 percent of China’s exports. The Greater Bay Area does not seem compatible with the “one country, two systems” principle. The future demands ingenuity and, most of all, respect for Hong Kong’s uniquely nuanced identity. Over 150 years of history have shown that economic security and constitutional rights are possible in Hong Kong without posing a threat to the Chinese system. |
| In 1989, Beijing protesters carried a banner that read, “A new path is opening up, the path we long ago failed to take.” It is a warning to us from the past, a plea not to fail again. For 30 years, China has rigorously censored all mention of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations and massacre. The government continues to arrest and detain the elderly parents of those who died. Even now, aged and frail, these mothers and fathers continue to remember their lost children and protest. | In 1989, Beijing protesters carried a banner that read, “A new path is opening up, the path we long ago failed to take.” It is a warning to us from the past, a plea not to fail again. For 30 years, China has rigorously censored all mention of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations and massacre. The government continues to arrest and detain the elderly parents of those who died. Even now, aged and frail, these mothers and fathers continue to remember their lost children and protest. |
| Zhao Ziyang remained under house arrest for nearly 16 years without being charged with a crime. In his private journals, he came to believe in the necessity of safeguarding a free press and independent judiciary among other reforms. He advocated not just love of country — China’s culture and influence, it’s strength and agility — but love for its most extraordinary asset, its people. | Zhao Ziyang remained under house arrest for nearly 16 years without being charged with a crime. In his private journals, he came to believe in the necessity of safeguarding a free press and independent judiciary among other reforms. He advocated not just love of country — China’s culture and influence, it’s strength and agility — but love for its most extraordinary asset, its people. |
| When Zhao died in 2005, his death was censored in China; but in Hong Kong, 15,000 people paid tribute to him in a candlelight vigil. Hong Kong faithfully remembered what China could not allow itself to mourn. It still does. | When Zhao died in 2005, his death was censored in China; but in Hong Kong, 15,000 people paid tribute to him in a candlelight vigil. Hong Kong faithfully remembered what China could not allow itself to mourn. It still does. |
| Madeleine Thien teaches literature at Brooklyn College and is the author, most recently, of “Do Not Say We Have Nothing.” | Madeleine Thien teaches literature at Brooklyn College and is the author, most recently, of “Do Not Say We Have Nothing.” |
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