Twenty-five years ago, on July 1, 1997, the British handed over Hong Kong to the communist regime in Beijing. Today marks the halfway point of promised autonomous rule under the “One Country, Two Systems” framework. With years to go until full Chinese rule, there is little left to distinguish the repressive administration running Hong Kong today from that of authoritarian CCP rule in Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping is traveling to Hong Kong to celebrate the deprivation of democratic participation for its residents, the lack of fundamental freedoms, and the ending of an independent media. The hallmarks of individual freedom are more than abbreviated; they are gone. Managing strategic competition with China is more critical than in 2019.
Three years ago, Hong Kongers took to the streets in an attempt to halt the controversial extradition legislation. Beijing responded by disassembling the rights and liberties free people everywhere hold sacred. “Authorities have jailed the opposition, with many imprisoned for more than a year. Hong Kong’s leaders have raided independent media organizations, shuttered museums, and removed public works of art, weakened democratic institutions, delayed elections, prevented vigils, disqualified sitting lawmakers, and instituted loyalty oaths. Government officials have spread disinformation that grassroots protests were the work of foreign actors. They have done all of this in an effort to deprive Hong Kongers of what they have been promised,” according to a statement released by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Since then, China has not stopped its harassment at Hong Kong’s shores. Today the PLAN aggressively pursues a policy of provocation of foreign vessels in international waters in the South and East China Seas and the PLAAF stalks planes above in commercial airspace. It enters Taiwanese air space regularly and its navy drills off the Taiwanese coast. Is Taiwan next?
Eight years ago, Chinese scholar Zheng Wang wrote in Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, that “if we want to figure out China’s intentions, we must first appreciate the building blocks of China’s intentions.” What are the assumptions that China makes about how the world works with a rising Chinese state? According to Chris Ford, author of a MITRE Corporation Occasional Paper on China published this week, the West needs to understand Chinese assumptions about “…the identity they claim for themselves on the basis of curated and cultivated foundations of Chinese historical memory, the role and mission they ascribe to themselves and to China in this context, and their vision for what the world will look like if Beijing “wins” the fateful competition with the United States upon which it has embarked.”
China’s worldview combines a confidence in the inclusive nature of national power with a belief that the dominant state in the global system has the opportunity, right, and obligation to establish the norms and rules for the international system. The once proud “Middle Kingdom” 中王国 (Zhōng wángguó) suffered a century of humiliation by Western powers and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders today often reflect on this history in speeches and conversations to justify the country’s aggressive policies toward democratic states. To President Xi Jinping and the senior CCP leadership, its actions are righting an injustice and providing the basis for a “national rejuvenation.” Hong Kong was only the first step.
Ford points out that the strategic vision is built upon a “three-fold foundation: (1) a “comprehensive” conception of national power and its ingredients; (2) a monist theory of political authority and systemic dominance by the entity possessing such power in the greatest degree; and (3) an ideology of national grievance that provides an “engine” for aspirations to avenge past wrongs… [by] placing Beijing “once more” in a central and dominating role in the world system.”
Chinese leaders are influenced by what they believe the state should look like in terms of a vertical hierarchy, focused on a powerful political center. The barbarous peripheral states remain less civilized in Chinese terms and thus need to acknowledge they are not equal to China. Modernization is not equal to Westernization from a Chinese perspective. Over time the leadership in Beijing believes the world will fall in line as the locus of power inevitably shifts eastward and the CCP sets new rules for operating in a Chinese-led global system. The free world needs to recognize that Hong Kong is the first to fall in a multi-step process to create a Sino-centric world.
Daria served in the U.S. State Dept.