Keeping an eye on Communist, Totalitarian China, and its influence both globally, and we as Canadians. I have come to the opinion that we are rarely privy to truth regarding the real goal, the agenda of China, it's ambitions for Canada [including special focus on the UK, US & Australia]. No more can we trust the legacy media as there appears to be increasing censorship applied to the topic of communist China. I ask why. Here is what I find.
The peaceful protesters blockading the centre of Hong Kong are the biggest challenge – and perhaps opportunity – Chinese President Xi Jinping has encountered since assuming power early last year.
Twenty-five years after the tragedy of Tiananmen Square, thousands of Chinese citizens are once more on the streets of a major city, fighting for democracy. How it turns out may well depend on how Mr. Xi thinks about what happened on June 4, 1989, and the role his father is rumoured to have played at the time.
The mood in Hong Kong eased on Monday, as riot police pulled back after three days of clashes with protesters that left dozens of people injured in the worst unrest the former British colony has seen since it was handed over to Chinese rule in 1997. It was anything but an ordinary Monday in the business district of Central, however, as tens of thousands of demonstrators remained in the street throughout the day, blocking traffic and grinding commerce to a halt in one of the world’s most important financial centres. As night fell, they took turns sleeping in the streets while others stayed alert, chanting from behind makeshift barricades.
It wasn’t clear how long the pause in the confrontation would last. “Since calm has been largely restored to the streets where citizens gathered, riot police have withdrawn,” the Hong Kong government said in a statement. It called on the protesters to stay calm and to disperse peacefully “as soon as possible.”
That seems unlikely. This is a crisis that can only be ended – one way or the other – by the central government in Beijing, either by giving the protesters some or all of what they want, or by ordering a harsher crackdown.
That means the decision lies in the hands of Mr. Xi, whose authority is almost unchallenged in today’s China.
When Mr. Xi rose to power early last year, many were cynical that he would be any different from predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. But there was quiet optimism in some quarters, a wishfulness that sprang from a story whispered by those who told it: Mr. Xi’s father – Xi Zhongxun – was one of the few senior Party officials who spoke out against the decision to use force against the student-led protesters in the spring of 1989.
At this point, what Xi Zhongxun did or didn’t say to his comrades before the tanks rolled in Tiananmen Square is somewhere between anecdote and myth. There are no publicly available documents or recordings that tell us what kind of intervention, if any, he made. But the rumour of his opposition survived, inspiring hope among China’s few remaining liberals that Xi Jinping wouldn’t prove too different from his father.
“Xi’s father had great integrity. He was very clear about what is right and wrong, and very brave in expressing what he was thinking. I hope that the son inherited some of his merits,” Bao Tong, a former high-ranking Communist official, said in an interview last year at his apartment in Beijing, which is guarded by police. Mr. Bao, once one of the most powerful men in China, was purged in 1989 and has been under house arrest ever since for writing a speech indicating he sided with the students on Tiananmen Square.
The protests in Hong Kong will give us something like an answer as to whether the son thinks people like Mr. Bao, and perhaps his own father, were on the right side of history 25 years ago, or whether he – like many Chinese citizens (and foreign businessmen) – now believes that Deng Xiaoping was right to order the crushing of the Tiananmen protests in the name of preserving China’s “stability.”
The early signs are worrisome. Rather than the political and economic reforms many had hoped Mr. Xi would introduce, he has spent much of his first 18 months accumulating power and sidelining enemies.
He is the President, the head of the Communist Party and the head of the military. Meanwhile, his potential challengers are in jail (former Party rising star Bo Xilai), under investigation (former internal security chief Zhou Yongkang) or in fear that they could be the next target of a spreading anti-corruption campaign that seems to focus on Mr. Xi’s rivals while ignoring evidence of funny accounting among his political allies and even his own family.
Thus far, Mr. Xi has not shown the moral clarity his father – who bravely befriended Tibet’s exiled Dalai Lama – possessed. Faced with mounting popular unrest among the Uyghur population of China’s far-west Xinjiang region, his government has not made any serious effort to accommodate the faith and culture of the Muslim Uyghurs, who feel they are being assimilated by waves of government-sponsored Han Chinese migration.
Instead, the police and military presence in the region has been increased, and public displays of religiosity harshly punished. Ilham Tohti, a widely respected Uyghur academic who called for co-existence, was arrested and shockingly sentenced to life in prison on charges of supporting separatism.
That hard-line approach has brought only escalating violence in Xinjiang, including an outbreak last week that left 50 people dead in Luntai county when a group of locals (the official Xinhua news agency called them “rioters”) attacked two police stations. The bloodshed has now spread beyond Xinjiang itself, including a horrific knife attack on a south China railway station in March, and a frightening car bomb on Tiananmen Square last November.
Hong Kong’s peaceful uprising is very different to what’s happening in Xinjiang, and not just in terms of tactics. While the average Han Chinese has never been to (and would never dream of going to) Xinjiang, and likely doesn’t know any Uyghurs personally, they can see themselves in the faces of those staring down the riot police in the financial district of Central and other parts of Hong Kong.
The city is also a crucial economic link between mainland China and the rest of the world. It has prospered precisely because of the post-1997 “one country, two systems” model that now seems to be at a critical juncture as protesters and the government face off over whether there can be free elections in the city – a “special administrative region” of China – without Beijing hand-picking who they can and can’t vote for.
What happens in Hong Kong over the coming days will tell us a lot about where China is heading in the era of Xi Jinping. A negotiated solution that appeases some or all of the protesters would suggest China finally has the kind of leader that the Communist Party’s undemocratic “meritocracy” was supposed to produce. The sidelining of Mr. Xi’s enemies – and his own genuine personal popularity among ordinary Chinese – gives him the power to surprise everyone in how he handles the Occupy Central movement.
A crackdown, particularly one that involves use of the People’s Liberation Army, would tell us China is in for another dark decade of stifling repression.
Once more, the early signs aren’t good. Hong Kong police have already used tear gas and pepper spray in failed efforts to disperse the crowd, which has instead continued to grow. Classic Chinese information-control measures have been deployed, with the terms Occupy Central and Umbrella Revolution (a moniker gained as protesters used their umbrellas to deflect tear-gas canisters) now blocked on the Weibo social network. Instagram – where photos of the umbrella-wielding protesters defying police were rapidly spreading – is no longer accessible in mainland China, consigning it to the same virtual prison as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
In another sign of the government’s thinking, China’s state-controlled media has condemned Occupy Central as an “illegal pro-democracy movement” responsible for “undermining social stability” in Hong Kong. Those are heavy words in the People’s Republic.
The Tiananmen Square crackdown is rarely referred to in the Chinese press, but the parallels between Beijing 1989 and Hong Kong 2014 are too obvious to ignore on this occasion.
“China is no longer the same nation it was 25 years ago. We have accumulated experience and drawn lessons from others, which help strengthen our judgment when faced with social disorder,” read a sharply worded editorial in the English-language Global Times, a newspaper published by the official People’s Daily.
We may soon learn which lessons Mr. Xi has chosen to draw from the last student-led pro-democracy protest in China – and whether the cynics or the optimists were right about the son of Xi Zhongxun.
Tens of thousands of protesters swelled demonstrations in Hong Kong’s main districts pressing for free and open elections.
CHRIS MCGRATH / GETTY IMAGES
Protesters put on goggles and wrap themselves in clear wrap after hearing a rumour that police were coming with tear gas outside the Hong Kong Government Complex.
Published on Mon Sep 29 2014
Bloomberg
Tens of thousands of protesters swelled in Hong Kong’s main districts pressing for free and open elections and the resignation of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, even as one of their leaders set a deadline for the gatherings to end.
The main protest area near the government’s main office in the Admiralty district swelled with demonstrators, who blanketed the main road feeding the business district. The movement, kick- started by students on Sept. 26, led to violent clashes yesterday with police, who used tear gas to disperse crowds.
Thousands of demonstrators, many of them students wearing black t-shirts, were sitting down on Hennessy Road, which winds through Causeway Bay, to the east of the main protest area. In Mong Kok, on the other side of Victoria Harbour, thousands more protesters took up positions in one of the city’s most bustling shopping districts.
WONG MAYE-E/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pro-democracy protesters flood the Central financial district in Hong Kong Monday.
VINCENT YU/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Riot police use pepper spray against protesters after thousands of people block a main road to the financial central district outside the government headquarters.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
VINCENT YU/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Protesters rest on a main road in the financial central district after riot police used tear gas against them as thousands of people blocked the road in Hong Kong, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014.
XAUME OLLEROS/GETTY IMAGES
Protesters pour water over the head of a fellow demonstrator during riots that followed a pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong on September 28, 2014.
XAUME OLLEROS/GETTY IMAGES
Pro-democracy protesters demonstrate in Hong Kong on September 28, 2014.
VINCENT YU/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Protesters walk through tear gas used by riot police against protesters after thousands of people blocked a main road at the financial central district in Hong Kong, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014.
XAUME OLLEROS/GETTY IMAGES
Police confront protesters in Hong Kong during a demonstration on September 28, 2014.
Pro-democracy protests swelled in Hong Kong on the eve of a two-day holiday that may bring record numbers to rallies spreading throughout the city as organizers pressed demands for free elections.
With the workday ended and temperatures dropping, thousands of people were returning to the three main demonstration points, blocking some of the city’s roadways. Hong Kong marks China’s National Day tomorrow, the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and Chung Yeung Festival on Thursday, when Hong Kong people honour their ancestors.
“It’s quite possible that at least more than 100,000, if not up to 300,000, 400,000 people, will join in the protest in a show of people’s power,” Willy Lam, adjunct professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in an interview today. “They want to convince the Hong Kong government and Beijing that any use of force will be counter-productive. It will only galvanize more of the rest of Hong Kong’s 7 million people.”
The movement, kick-started by students on Sept. 26, swelled following weekend clashes with riot police who used tear gas to disperse crowds. Student leaders said today that the protests would spread if their demands aren’t met for Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to resign and for the government in Beijing to drop plans to control the 2017 leadership election.
The government has pulled anti-riot police off the streets with officers standing off to avoid the clashes of Sept. 28 that angered demonstrators. The benchmark Hang Seng Index dipped again, marking its biggest two-day decline since February.
Lam Yik Fei/BloombergDemonstrators hold an effigy of Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong's chief executive, during Monday's rally.
Roads leading into the Admiralty district, where protesters have surrounded the government headquarters, continued to be blocked with workers commuting by foot and metro. Crowds this evening are also gathering at the popular shopping districts of Causeway Bay and Mong Kok.
“This movement is to achieve universal suffrage and get the National People’s Congress to take back their decision,” Alex Chow, one of the student leaders, said at a press conference Tuesday. “Yet we see that CY Leung doesn’t seem to be communicating with the top and with the people and he doesn’t understand what democracy is. So to achieve democracy, we must start with asking Leung to step down.”
When asked at a press conference today whether he would resign, Leung said that “any personnel changes” would result in the existing election committee choosing his successor, rather than through a vote.
At the briefing, Leung dismissed speculation that the People’s Liberation Army, which was used to crush the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, would be used in Hong Kong. He also said that the city was preparing for the protests to last.
“The impact from Occupy Central would not be just three to five days — it could be quite long,” Leung said, citing the protesters’ road blocks, medical aid centres and supply stations.
The students called for Leung to respond to their demands by tomorrow. Leung is due to mark the founding of modern China at an 8 a.m. ceremony near where the main protests are being held. The popular firework show over Victoria Harbour for the holiday has been canceled.
The demonstrations coincide with Golden Week, a week-long holiday in China when hundreds of thousands of people from the mainland travel to Hong Kong. Some retailers are closing outlets, with Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd., the world’s largest jewellery chain, shutting about 20 shops today, after keeping more than 25 closed yesterday.
The real estate market is also feeling the effects of the protests. Apartment viewings dropped 50% because of the unrest, Centaline Property Agency Ltd, the biggest privately held realtor in Hong Kong, said in an email. Prices may show a decline if the rallies last more than a week, the broker said.
The protests — spurred by China’s decision last month that candidates for the 2017 leadership election must be vetted by a committee — pose the biggest challenge to China’s control of the city since British colonial rule ended in 1997.
At the time, the Chinese government pledged to maintain the city’s freedoms under its “one country, two systems” approach. China had endorsed the idea of holding elections in Hong Kong as far back as 1990 with the adoption of the city’s basic law, a type of constitution. As China’s influence has grown within the Hong Kong government, pro-democracy activists stepped up their fight for an open election when the city holds its first vote for chief executive in 2017.
The clashes with police this week were the city’s biggest since unrest in the 1960s led by pro-Communist groups inspired by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Police arrested 89 people during the weekend demonstrations, a spokesman said.
The U.S. government supports the aspirations of the Hong Kong people for universal suffrage and called on the authorities to exercise restraint, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government said it was important for Hong Kong to preserve rights and freedoms for its people, including the right to demonstrate, according to an emailed statement from the Foreign Office. Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, whose government fled after losing China’s civil war, said he supports the Hong Kong people’s pursuit of democracy.
Hong Kong is part of China, and foreign governments should not interfere with its internal affairs, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said yesterday.
Three B-2 strategic nuclear bombers completed a tour of duty in Guam this week, as tensions remained high between the United States and China over what the Pentagon called a “dangerous” Chinese fighter-jet intercept of a U.S. surveillance plane last week.
“This training deployment demonstrates continued U.S. commitment to global strategic bomber operations throughout the Asia-Pacific region, and exercises the president’s credible and flexible military options to meet national security obligations for the U.S. and its allies,” said Navy Adm. Cecil D. Haney, commander ofU.S. Strategic Command.
Adm. Haney said in a statement that the bombers are intended to send a message to allies and adversaries.
