Tang Yan/SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP Images
Protesters gesture with five fingers raised, signifying five demands, during a pro-democracy demonstration in Hong Kong, May 27, 2020.
What will happen next in the Hong Kong crisis? Will there be more protests—and, if so, what form will they take? How will the Chinese Communist Party respond to Secretary of State Pompeo’s statement accusing them of reneging on their promises to allow Hong Kong to maintain a “high degree of autonomy” for 50 years after changing from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China? What will President Trump say and do when he follows up on that statement? Several journalists contacted me last week, ahead of Trump’s Friday statement, and asked me these predictive questions. I frustrated them by dodging the first and last ones completely and only partially answering the second.
I felt most confident predicting how Beijing would respond to Pompeo’s statement. Official media would, I predicted, treat it as inaccurate and offering further proof that the United States was determined to interfere in internal Chinese affairs. Beijing’s goal would be to use it as one more excuse to fan the flames of nationalist outrage on the mainland. This is a particularly convenient time for Xi Jinping to be able to do this, I pointed out, as it offered a way to distract attention at home away from an economic slowdown. I was right, but that was an easy line of argument to advance, especially given how many autocrats and their supporters just now are fond of harping on nationalist themes to divert populaces from focusing on domestic woes.
As for whether there would be more protests, I said I was confident there would be—but did not feel able to say what form they would take. The people of Hong Kong have shown both an incredible resilience and an extraordinary creativity in shifting strategies to deal with novel situations. This is known locally as a “be water” approach to protests, in honor of a famous quote by martial arts legend and cinema star Bruce Lee.
Just one month ago, few were predicting that the national authorities would make a bold move to curtail freedoms in Hong Kong.
The risks involved in many forms of activism have been ratcheted up by Beijing’s move to ram through a new National Security Law, which is what triggered Pompeo’s statement. The details have yet to be spelled out publicly, but in all likelihood it will make it dangerous to say and do some things that it had previously been safe to do in Hong Kong but not in nearby mainland cities, from mocking Xi Jinping in social media posts to holding gatherings to mourn the victims of the June 4, 1989, massacre in Beijing. Acts of resistance will continue in spite of this. They will be different from what we’ve seen so far, or a different mix than we’ve seen before, but it is hard to say much beyond that.
I don’t think the journalists were all that surprised by my dodging completely the question about what Trump would do and how the Hong Kong crisis would unfold. Trump has made many unpredictable moves, and the moves he made would have an impact on the next stage in the crisis. Beyond that, the reporters knew when they contacted me that my training is in history, and historians are generally more comfortable looking backward than forward.
Some also knew what I had to say more specifically about predictions in Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, my short book that came out in February. I stressed there that Hong Kong has a long history of making fools of forecasters. One famous mistaken prediction was made by the British foreign secretary in 1841, when he lamented that his country had been cheated to get Hong Kong as a key victor’s prize when it won the Opium War, since the minor port would never become a great “Mart of Trade”—but that is precisely what it became.
Little wonder historians avoid the prognostication game. One year ago, no one, myself included, was predicting that the biggest social movement in the history of the city was about to start, in spite of widespread discontent among Hong Kongers at Beijing’s oppression, with Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s compliance. Yet the protest wave that began last June was the biggest sustained social movement to take place in any part of the PRC since Tiananmen.
More recently still, just one month ago there was widespread understanding that Beijing was running out of patience with the Hong Kong situation. And yet, few were predicting that, especially since Lam and company seemed so ready to keep ratcheting up the pressure on activists without the capital getting directly involved, the national authorities would make a bold move to curtail freedoms in the city. But that is just what Beijing did with the National Security Law announcement. This made me especially hesitant to do much predicting last week.
Trump plays into the nationalistic narrative the Communist Party is fond of that holds that there is an “anti-China” tendency afoot.
I am especially glad, in retrospect, that I did not make any specific prediction about what Trump would say in his Friday statement. If I had, I would have been totally wrong on at least one major point. I had no idea that he would combine discussion of the Hong Kong issue with an announcement that the United States was pulling out of the World Health Organization.
This is a good example, though, of how historians tend to be better positioned to place something that has happened into context than to prepare an audience for it coming. I can weigh in on how the statement fits in with earlier developments. It provides fresh evidence that the president is prone to make moves relating to China that send mixed messages. Xi and company’s moves toward Hong Kong can be criticized, and partly have been criticized by the White House, as breaking with international norms. They violated the agreement forged between Beijing and London that all countries, including the United States, had a right to expect would provide the framework for the situation in the city between 1997 and 2047. The idea that Beijing was failing to act like a reliable member of the global community was undermined, however, by Trump pairing discussion of Hong Kong with the announcement that the U.S. would be pulling out of the WHO. Doing this during a pandemic can justly be seen by other countries as an example of Washington making a mockery of what the international community has in the past had the right to expect from the United States.
What we see here more generally is Trump claiming to want to push back against a foreign government, but doing so in a way that actually makes it easier rather than harder for Beijing to advance the narratives it is trying to put forward at home and to some extent globally as well. Past examples of this came when he insisted on using the term “Chinese virus” for the novel coronavirus, even after many in the international community took to avoiding that phrase because of its racist connotations. This played into the nationalistic narrative the Communist Party is fond of that holds that there is an “anti-China” tendency afoot in the world.
In addition, while it is encouraging overall to see the Trump administration taking the deterioration of Hong Kong’s autonomy seriously now, a lot of damage was done last year when the president continually praised Xi Jinping’s personal qualities, saying he was confident that this strong leader and good person would handle things in that city well. The writing has been on the wall for several years now that Xi is determined to bring all parts of the PRC under tighter control, and Trump’s mixture of making critical comments about “China” while praising its leader has been disturbing. The details periodically change, but he keeps making it too easy for Beijing’s propagandists to gain support within the country for the idea that the West is determined to undermine China and that, therefore, it’s crucial to have a respected strongman in charge who can make sure the country holds its own in a dangerous international arena.
There are serious problems with mixed messaging, whether it takes the form of combining praise for Xi with criticism of “China” or of pairing criticism of Beijing’s failure to abide by an international agreement with pulling out of an international organization. And I’m afraid that there is one prediction relating to Trump and the PRC that I do feel pretty confident making. Namely, this won’t be the last time he engages in this sort of mixed messaging.
