For most of the six years since its return to Chinese control in 1997 under the rubric of “One Country, Two Systems,” Hong Kong has served as perhaps the single most important piece of evidence for three fundamental assumptions underlying our policy toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The first of these is that the government in Beijing is not so much ideological as pragmatic and flexible: hence its willingness to grant at least a semblance of self-government to Hong Kong, now a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic. The second is that the liberality displayed toward Hong Kong is a signal of the longer-term course that the Beijing leadership has set for China as a whole: toward more openness and increased political as well as economic freedom. The final assumption is that the reasonableness Beijing has demonstrated in Hong Kong will eventually persuade the people of Taiwan to adopt a similar model, and enter China at no cost to their democracy or freedom but with great benefit to the trust and cordiality of the relationship between Beijing and Washington.

These comfortable assumptions look to have been completely overturned by the mass pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong in July. The full consequences of those events have yet to be felt, but there can be no doubt that they have launched not only Hong Kong and China but also the United States and other interested parties into deep waters. Abundant storm signals notwithstanding, most commentators and government officials around the world were caught by surprise as the crisis burst, both so suddenly and with such great force.

What astonished everyone, participants and opponents alike, on Tuesday, July 1—the sixth anniversary, to the day, of Hong Kong’s “peaceful return to the Motherland”—was the enormous number of people who turned out for what had looked to be a rather routine and inconsequential protest against a proposed law. This was the so-called Article 23, a security law for Hong Kong that, among other provisions, would have allowed searches without warrants; long prison terms for the disclosure, for instance by journalists, of so-called state secrets (in China, economic data can be thus classified); and the banning in Hong Kong of groups banned in China—such as the China Democratic party, or the Falungong religion, or, for that matter, the Roman Catholic Church.

In the weeks and months prior to July 1 there had been some agitation against Article 23 by democratic activists in Hong Kong, but the proposed law was nevertheless expected easily to pass the legislative council (where only 24 of 60 seats are currently elected), as scheduled, on July 9. Was it not the case, after all, that Asians, unlike Westerners, cared more for stability than for liberty? In the widely accepted cliché, as paraphrased by the last British governor, Christopher Patten, the Hong Kong Chinese were “politically apathetic, ignorant and uncaring about politics and government, leaving it to a tiny elite and the civil servants to govern” as they pursued their exclusively economic interests.

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That something was fundamentally wrong with this idea had become clear by mid-afternoon on July 1. Instead of the 30,000 to 50,000 demonstrators that the Beijing-appointed chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, had told his masters to expect, or even the 100,000 that the organizers had sometimes dreamed of, fully a half-million residents turned out. Braving blistering sun and temperatures in the 90’s, they demonstrated for six-and-a-half hours, demanding that Article 23 be withdrawn and effectively shutting down the city into the bargain. Many would-be protesters never managed to join the crowd, as public transportation was totally overwhelmed.

The chief executive watched the proceedings on television—in China proper, CNN feeds of the events had been cut—and confessed they gave him “a sleepless night.” Pro-Beijing commentators made a show of attributing the spectacle to material factors, which was partly correct: unemployment in Hong Kong is at an unheard-of 8.6 percent, and property values have been falling steadily. But the demonstrators themselves, when asked, stoutly refuted such condescending assessments. Speaking of her children, a Hong Kong woman married to an American put it this way: “Three days before American Independence Day, I took them to march with me to show them that the half of their heritage that is Chinese cares as much about liberty and human dignity as the half that is American—and what patriotism and love of country really mean.”

Lest anyone doubt that this was what the half-million had turned out to assert, two more mass demonstrations followed. On July 9, an estimated 50,000 protesters packed the surrounding precincts of the British-era legislative assembly. Three days later, 20,000 gathered again, demanding free elections to choose the entire legislature as well as the chief executive (who is currently “elected” by an assembly of 800 carefully chosen pro-Beijing nominators).

For both Beijing and the appointed Hong Kong government, there could be no question: these stunning events represented a “people power” challenge as great as the vast pro-democracy uprising that had swept China itself in 1989. The fearless Roman Catholic bishop of the territory, Joseph Zen, summed up the issue very aptly in speaking to the final demonstration: “Hong Kong people are intelligent and civilized,” he said, “but we still can’t be masters of our own.” The same is true, he might have added, for the people of China itself.

What the long-term response will be to this deep and fundamental challenge is a subject to which I shall return. In the short term, a kind of stalemate has emerged. The Hong Kong government salvaged the immediate situation by removing from Article 23 several of its most odious provisions and then, when that failed to quell public outrage, by deferring legislative consideration of it until later this autumn. In the meantime, on the bedrock demand for democracy, the Hong Kong administration yielded nothing, offering only a vague promise of “consultations” about political and constitutional matters. In 2004 or 2005, it suggested, there might be an opportunity to prepare legislation for 2006, which would in turn prepare for the elections scheduled for 2007. The word “democracy” itself was scrupulously avoided.

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Buying time, in short, is the order of the moment. And that is understandable enough. For, in truth, Beijing’s choices are quite constricted. To begin with, there is the Basic Law—a set of rules for Hong Kong, passed by China’s own parliament, which greatly constrain the PRC’s freedom of action (unless Beijing recklessly decides to tear it up). Nor is a military solution in the cards, à la Tiananmen Square in 1989. Although there are Chinese troops in the SAR—no one who saw the handover in 1997 will forget the first several hours of television coverage, when column after column of military vehicles entered the city as impassive residents watched and the rain fell in torrents—there are not enough of them to cow a territory of seven million inhabitants. Nor does anyone in the Beijing leadership have the personal standing, or perhaps the courage, to order such a thing.

In 1989, moreover, it was mostly Hong Kong money that rescued the PRC, then under brief sanction by most Western countries. Today, what might be called “Greater Hong Kong”—the SAR proper and the neighboring province of Guangdong—is the richest, fastest-growing, most technically advanced, and freest part of the People’s Republic of China. Its combined GDP of a little over $300 billion accounts for more than 20 percent of the country’s entire gross domestic product. Hong Kong’s investors bankroll and administer between 60 and 80 percent of all foreign-invested enterprises in China, as well as disproportionately large amounts of high-technology investment and foreign trade. To damage Hong Kong would thus be to damage the cornerstone of the economic edifice that is today’s China.

At least some leaders in China seem to have taken in these realities, and even to understand that further reform, of some kind, is the only way to mitigate the Hong Kong crisis. One of them, State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, has stated that “There will be economic, political reforms and other reforms to improve the livelihood of the people.” Another, a top Chinese trade official, has ventured that “any method of expression, so long as it is allowed under the law, deserves to be taken seriously.”

Most intriguing of all is China’s premier, Wen Jiabao. In 1989, Wen accompanied the former Communist-party chief Zhao Ziyang on a sympathetic visit to the students in Tiananmen Square shortly before the hardliners opted for bloody suppression. (Zhao, purged after the massacre, reportedly still lives in Beijing under house arrest.) This year, Wen made a highly successful trip to Hong Kong on the eve of the first protest (he departed on the morning of July 1). His personal agents are said to be in the territory, quietly talking to people of every shade of opinion.

What we may be witnessing in these gropings is a tentative resuscitation of the once-numerous liberal wing of the Chinese Communist party, with Hong Kong seen by them as the ideal environment—ideal because contained—in which to experiment with genuine political reform. This is not a romantic fantasy. The suppression of 1989 was widely opposed at the highest levels of both party and army; authorization for it came ultimately from only one man, Deng Xiaoping, China’s last strong man. Would it be too much to expect Hong Kong to become a test-bed for greater political participation? After all, some in the party would argue, we are going to have to make genuine political reforms sooner or later, just as we made economic reforms. We began the latter in a few small, special zones near Hong Kong. Where shall we test political reforms? Why not in Hong Kong itself?

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But of course this is anathema to other powerful figures. Both Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao, their hold on the reins of government tenuous at best, face an entrenched opposition led by China’s former president, Jiang Zemin, whose ambitious followers in the “Shanghai group” have effectively run China since they were installed by Deng after the 1989 massacre. We may be certain that these men see nothing in China’s future but more Communist dictatorship. Had they felt otherwise, they would surely have managed to make a start at reform during the fourteen years they held uncontested power.

Because of this powerful opposition, real reform looks to be a difficult sell in Beijing. Instead, we can expect still more extemporized half-measures, designed simultaneously to quash the emergence of a full-fledged democracy movement, restore the central government’s slipping authority, and avoid arousing too much protest or unfavorable publicity.

One such palliative half-measure might be to fire the unpopular chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa; but that is unlikely to happen. Although he is a poor administrator and has earned deep disfavor in Hong Kong, he is also the man personally chosen for his job by Jiang Zemin. The current leaders in Beijing, who came of political age during the all-out power struggles of the Cultural Revolution, are in no mood to precipitate another such struggle by taking on Jiang’s faction so nakedly.

Tung will probably stay in office, then, albeit with some attractive new ministers by his side. No doubt, he will attempt both to carry out instructions from Beijing and somehow win over the population that has been entrusted to him. These he will try to bribe by means of economic “pump priming” and devices to prop up the housing market. He may even undertake carefully supervised walkabouts in actual Hong Kong neighborhoods, and give from-the-heart interviews to foreign media. All the while, he will try to intimidate—not directly, given the population’s hair-trigger sensitivity to any threat to existing civil liberties, but by using his patronage powers to shower favors on those who support him while making life as difficult as possible for his opponents.

There may be other half-measures as well, including much playing of the “patriotism” card. As in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre in China, this would feature official stress on the greatness of the Chinese race and the achievements of Chinese civilization, as well as on the innumerable insults China has endured from foreigners and the consequent need to pursue national glory—with democrats labeled “anti-Chinese.” Whether this goes down well with the Hong Kong Chinese—patriots, certainly, but likely to find the manipulative northern style alien and irritating—is another question.

In any case, half-measures, even taken together, do not add up to a solution. Nobody will be fooled by payoffs and flag raisings. Public opinion will not change. And within a matter of months the crisis is certain to begin again. For Beijing has insisted on reintroducing the security bill as scheduled, and evidently thinks it can be passed.

President Hu Jintao has predicted that, “after undergoing earnest, extensive consultations,” the slightly revised law “will certainly win the understanding, support, and agreement of the Hong Kong compatriots.” We already know, however, what the Hong Kong compatriots think. If the bill does pass, it will not be with their support and agreement but because Beijing will have called in every chit, twisted every arm, and bribed every legislator it could find and because the Hong Kong government will have undertaken a full-court press to ram it through.

And then what? If the bill passes, the government will presumably want to enforce it. Why take the SAR to the brink of a political precipice to establish provisions that are never used? Making a public example of some dissident figure would be one obvious way to show the new dispensation with respect to political activity. In Chinese this is called killing the chicken to frighten the monkey.

Yet any attempt actually to arrest a prominent Hong Kong democrat, or shut down a newspaper, will almost certainly fail to intimidate the people of Hong Kong. Instead, it is likely to lead to further unrest and, especially, to the emigration of many who can take their capital with them. Threaten the wildly popular anti-Communist Apple Daily, or attack Bishop Zen (already being done), or close down popular radio talk shows, and you risk destroying Hong Kong itself.

Nor is that all. The Basic Law provides that, in the legislative elections to be held next year, the number of democratically chosen seats will rise from the current 24 to 30, exactly half the total. If the government does push the security bill through, an angry populace may punish it next year by promptly filling those seats with democrats. If that prospect is not troubling enough to Beijing, Hong Kong democrats have in the past won some of the remaining 30 seats as well (these are chosen by “functional constituencies”). If they win some again, the possibility looms of an anti-administration majority, capable of halting all government initiatives.

Alternatively, what if the bill should fail—despite the “earnest consultations,” the bribes, and the threats? After all, it failed to pass in July even though the pro-Beijing forces in the legislative council in theory enjoyed a reliable 36-to-24 majority. Such a failure, by demonstrating the impotence of the government, would create as many problems as would success.

This, in a nutshell, is China’s dilemma: damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t.

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Whatever direction the Hong Kong crisis takes, it will continue to reveal what may be called, in this post-strong-man era, the Wizard of Oz aspect of political control in China. The past 30 years have shown what masters of prevarication and illusion are China’s Communist leaders. Their greatest triumph has lain in their ability to convince the world, and many of their own people, that ever since the 1970’s they have been in the process of doing, or about to begin to do, things which, if they actually did them, would spell their own demise: freeing the press, reforming the banks and state-owned enterprises, developing a legal system, above all engaging in political reform. But limits exist even to China’s ability to postpone and to the rest of the world’s willingness to believe, and the Hong Kong crisis has brought those limits out into the open.

Quite unexpectedly, the Beijing government has been forced to fish or cut bait. Hong Kong will either be democratized, as public opinion overwhelmingly demands and as even the Basic Law strongly suggests it eventually will be, or it will not. No merely tactical solution exists. The problems in both China and Hong Kong are like the cracks in the Three Gorges Dam, structural defects that cannot simply be plastered over.

In fact, the Basic Law—Hong Kong’s constitution—is itself unworkable. It gives the people the freedom to speak out and to elect representatives, but denies those representatives the possibility of ever forming a government. The chief executive, chosen by Beijing in the manner I have indicated, is responsible not to the people he rules but to the Beijing government that rules him. Only full democratization—or full dictatorship—can restore something like equilibrium, and each has its perils.

The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to China itself. If Beijing vetoes democracy in Hong Kong, it will have reneged on an implied promise that has been fundamental not only to its role in the SAR but also to its approach to the rest of the world. Failure to deliver on the hopes and promises of 1997, so warmly welcomed at the time, will gut the credibility of any Chinese promise—and this at a time when Beijing is increasingly signing international agreements, the World Trade Organization agreement being perhaps the most important recent example.

Such a veto will also eliminate any possibility that the people of Taiwan would voluntarily agree to join the People’s Republic of China. The island’s elected president, Chen Shuibian, spoke out early on in support of the democratic movement in Hong Kong, and one of his top advisers participated in a teleconference that featured the Hong Kong democrat Emily Lau. Nor does the opposition Kuomintang party’s position differ all that much.

But now suppose instead that Beijing sets Hong Kong on the course of steady liberalization, culminating in full democracy as was suggested in 1994; and suppose that, in 2007, Hong Kong popularly elects a legislative council and a chief executive. The United States, Britain, and other international powers have already called for just such an outcome. They may be right do so, but do they fully grasp what an earthquake it will entail for all of China, and what it will do to the “stability” they prize so dearly?

Free elections in Hong Kong will produce a leader, having a mandate of unimpeachable legitimacy, conferred by several million voters, in China’s most advanced and economically important region. He (or she: Anson Chan, the distinguished civil servant, might well win such a free election) will be uncontrollable, at least by the Beijing leadership, itself elected by zero voters. That alone is sure to have a profound repercussion among the people of the PRC. If Beijing is perceived to have yielded democracy to Hong Kong because of popular pressure, it will prove to the Chinese people that although the Communists are incapable of initiating change on their own, the party has nevertheless become weak enough to be pushed in that direction. And it will be asked: if the people of Hong Kong, who lived uncomplainingly under British colonial rule for more than a century, can elect their own leadership, then why cannot we—the good loyal Chinese people of Shanghai or Tianjin or Wuhan or Beijing—do the same?

Things will only get messier if the party tries to hold on by force—assuming anyone in the leadership has the stomach to use violence. As for what happens after that, we have seen the dynamic before—in Russia, where Mikhail Gorbachev (who, good Communist that he was, had ensured that his job as president of the USSR would remain appointive) faced Boris Yeltsin (who had won election as president of Russia). Gorbachev lost. At a similar point, China will enter the maelstrom, and we can only hope it emerges half so well.

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How will all this affect the United States? Obviously, if China ends up repressing Hong Kong enough to end the fiction of “One Country, Two Systems,” we will no longer be able to treat Hong Kong, as we have done up till now, as if it were a separate, “free” entity, having its own customs, law, border controls, and so forth. Henceforth, we will be effectively dealing with one system. That will hurt alike the economies of Hong Kong, China, and the United States, whose total trade is massive. Our scenario for Taiwan’s joining China in a way similar to Hong Kong will also be rendered completely implausible, and we will have to start considering seriously the question of the island’s future international status and security.

Questions will also be raised about Beijing’s medium- to longer-term intentions. Any official map of the Asian region published in China shows large amounts of territory, notably in the South China Sea, claimed by Beijing but not in fact under its control. Up to now it has been easy to shrug off these claims as artifacts of a bygone political era, soon to be rendered moot as Beijing liberalizes and grasps the lesson that negotiation, and not force, is the way to real international stature. Hong Kong mishandled will be a chilling piece of contrary evidence, one that will have to be carefully weighed in light of another such piece of evidence, namely, the costly and ambitious military buildup in which China is currently engaged. Could it be that the rulers in Beijing are not the economically oriented pragmatists we have taken them for?

Which brings us back a final time to democratization, whether initiated by a more liberal regime or by popular pressure, or both. This is, as I have noted, a prospect no less fraught with danger, and no less subversive of our prevailing assumptions. But it is also, needless to say, potentially far more hopeful for the people of China and the world. Elsewhere I have sketched out several scenarios for such a future, and we need not rehearse them here.¹ As far as U.S. policy is concerned, the point is that, by insistently betting on the Communist regime, and declining to consider the terrible difficulties with which it is beset, we have systematically robbed ourselves of the ability to influence the course of events in accordance with our interests and our values—and time has at last caught up with us.

Events, indeed, are already in the saddle. Beijing must either go with the people of Hong Kong, or oppose them. Fudging is impossible. And fudging is now likewise impossible for us. Most media coverage of the present crisis has given the impression that what is at issue here is the future of Hong Kong. That is incorrect. What is really at issue is the future of China and, by direct implication, the future of freedom. And that, above all, is why Hong Kong is so important.

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¹ See my article, “A Free and Democratic China?,” in the November 2000 COMMENTARY.

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