Beijing wouldn’t hesitate to crush the Hong Kong protests if it meant preventing democracy infecting the mainland. Hong ong is the goose that lays the golden eggs for China. The ruling Communist party allows Britain’s former colony a degree of freedom denied to other parts of China because of its status as a financial centre. No less importantly, the families of many leading communists have luxurious properties and huge investments in Hong Kong. This is why the party has no wish to repeat the brutal military crackdown of Tiananmen Square in 1989.
As the people of Hong Kong gathered over the past week in the city’s central business district staging the biggest pro-democracy protest in a Chinese-controlled area in decades, headlines around the world compared today’s movement to the 1989 student demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
While the authorities have not yet used the brutal force that the Chinese army used to suppress the 1989 protests, observers are concerned about the possibility.
The latest warning coming from Beijing has been especially reminiscent of the 1989 rhetoric, and worryingly so, analysts say.
The People’s Daily, a government-controlled newspaper, said the protests are creating “chaos.”
“That is a significant term in Chinese Communist Party ideology, suggesting that the situation could threaten the Party’s hold on power, and therefore that decisive action is required,” writesAl Pessin at the Voice of America.
Mr. Pessin writes that the same word was used 25 years ago to describe Tiananmen Square.
The memory of Tiananmen and its historical legacy is crucial to today’s “Umbrella Revolution,” named so after the ubiquitous umbrellas that the protesters held to defend themselves from tear gas and pepper spray used by the police.
Hong Kong, the only area under Chinese control with freedom of speech, commemorates the massacre with an annual vigil.
As Max Fisher writes for Vox, that part of Chinese history has been so heavily censored in mainland China that many in the younger generation had never heard of it.
Hong Kongers feel responsible to keep the memory alive, Mr. Fisher says, but they are also scared they could face the same repression.
“That is a big part of why Hong Kong’s residents are so upset to see their police donning military-like uniforms and firing tear gas this weekend; it feels like an echo, however faint, of 1989’s violence,” writes Mr. Fisher.
“The drive to preserve freedom and autonomy in Hong Kong is all mixed in with the fear of another Tiananmen.”
This is especially true for the older members of the protests, which started out as a student movement but rapidly expanded to include residents of all ages, Patrick Brown writes for CBC.
“Those who remember taking to the streets in 1989 to voice their support for students in Tiananmen Square also remember that there were times when those students, too, seemed to be winning and the authorities retreating.”
Mr. Brown adds that they remember the final, “disastrous” outcome.
At the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman calls the parallels between 1989 and 2014 “eerie,” and points out that these similarities must be unsettling for Beijing.
“Once again, the demonstrations are led by students demanding democratic reform. Once again, the central authorities have lost control — and risk facing a choice between repression and a humiliating climbdown,” Mr. Rachman writes.
“Once again, the ultimate question is the power and authority of the Communist Party in Beijing.”
Louisa Lim emphasizes another “eerie” echo of 1989 at The New York Times.
Last week, government press “repeated familiar accusations that ‘hostile foreign forces’ were whipping up dissatisfaction.”
The precocious student leader of the protests, Joshua Wong, 17, was accused of having ties with the American government, Ms. Lim writes, “in an eerie echo of Tiananmen-era language.”
“But is this Tianmen 2.0?” asks Brendan Hong at The Daily Beast, skeptical of the notion that tanks of the People’s Liberation Army could roll in to clear the demonstrations out.
In a way, the protests are less threatening than those of Tiananmen, and the party has more options, observers say.
“Hong Kong is on China’s southern periphery, a distant outpost far removed from the politics of the capital,” writes Andrew Browne at The Wall Street Journal.
“The Party doesn’t even operate openly in Hong Kong. And students there are pressing for local democracy, not political change across China.”
Because of Hong Kong’s special status under the “one country, two systems” formula, Mr. Rachman writes, the authorities have more leeway than they had in 1989.
China is also vastly richer and more powerful than it was 25 years ago, adds Mr. Rachman.
The economic background of the protests is crucial, writes Sun Xi at The South China Morning Post. While Tiananmen was the center of power in mainland China and the political protests there garnered international attention and sympathy, Central is “Hong Kong’s business heart,” which complicates the situation.
The occupation “may well draw some global attention, but it has mainly provoked strong opposition from the business community, which wields much power and influence in Hong Kong.”
In case of a violent crackdown, some of China’s business would be hurt, especially investor confidence in Hong Kong, writes Mr. Browne.
The U.S.-China relationship would take a “pummeling.”
However, there is a crucial lesson to remember from the repercussions of Tiananmen on international business.
After the 1989 protests, the West imposed sanctions on Beijing, and foreign businesses fled the country.
But they came back soon after.
“As shock waves from the killings around Tiananmen reverberated around the world, few could have imagined that China’s economy, far from heading toward crisis, was in fact on the cusp of one of the greatest economic liftoffs in history,” says Mr. Browne.
“The launch occurred just a few years later when Deng Xiaoping, the main author of the armed assault on peaceful demonstrators, championed a new round of market-based overhauls.”
In the end, its all about the survival of the regime.
“Beijing may well calculate that any economic fallout would be temporary and manageable — as proved to be the case in 1989.”
Echoing that sentiment, Mr. Fisher writes at Vox that the world may have changed a lot since 1989, as had China’s role in it, “but it was also true in 1989 that Beijing was full of Western journalists and China knew it would pay heavily for massacring protesters, but did it anyway.”
In a plea for action in The Wall Street Journal, Yang Jianli and Teng Biao, former political prisoners in China, ask the world to prevent Tiananmen from happening again.
Mr. Yianli and Mr. Biao ask the Obama administration to put pressure on the Chinese government to allow democratic elections in Hong Kong and “forcefully condemn” violence against demonstrators. “The United States and the international community share the responsibility to prevent another murderous attack on pro-democracy demonstrators,” they write. “While the Tiananmen Square massacre surprised the world, this time the world is on notice.”
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Is China Facing Another Tiananmen Square Moment?
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