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It was a strong symbol in the dispute with the Chinese Communist Party: over the weekend, Hong Kong protesters seized new towers of the Hong Kong government equipped with surveillance technology. The city government says they served to control air quality and traffic flow. The demonstrators saw in them harbingers of a communist surveillance state Orwellian dimension. Who could blame them?
The Beijing authorities in Hong Kong are doing everything they can to counter free-thinking world citizens against themselves. Obviously peaceful demonstrators, as they pulled hundreds of thousands through the streets of the Chinese port metropolis a week ago, the CP accuses a "behavior similar to that of terrorists". Is it surprising that this weekend, for the first time, a Hong Kong policeman used his gun at a demonstration? Because false accusations can serve to justify a future intervention by Chinese mainland security forces in Hong Kong, the West must respond. Finally, Hong Kong's Sino-British return agreement to China explicitly guarantees freedom of assembly in the city.
But what can the West do to prevent China from forcibly intervening? Does he have to grow louder, threaten and warn? Or rather stay diplomatically? Behind this, in turn, is the question of how to keep it fundamentally with Beijing: is China the growing enemy that the West has to take in good time before it becomes overpowering? Or is the strategic partner to protect it from its own mistakes?
The great precedent is the suppression of the Beijing Student Uprising 30 years ago on Tiananmen Square. The West then admired the students and saw bloody butchers in the KP leaders who sent the People's Army. This is not wrong due to the many victims of the Tiananmen on June 4, 1989, but overlooks the fact that the CP was split at the time. Two of their most charismatic leaders, Zhao Ziyang and Wen Jiabao, descended from their party thrones to negotiate with the protesting students. But the students, who were at times transformed into heroes by Western media and politicians, had turned their success to their heads. They were politically inexperienced, divided among themselves and missed the chance of negotiation. Something like this can easily be repeated today in Hong Kong.
"The Chinese people's opinions about Hong Kong are far apart"
So far, one does not recognize who plays the role of Zhao or Wen in the Beijing Politburo. Presumably it is the survivors of the former party youth faction around Prime Minister Li Keqiang. But it is undisputed that today in China is hot up to the highest party committees hot over Hong Kong is discussed. No amount of propaganda and censorship can prevent that. "The opinions of the Chinese people about Hong Kong are widely diverging, many are turning against the protesters, but there are those sympathetic to the movement, who find it difficult to articulate because of censorship," said Xiao Shu, a former columnist for the weekly Nanfang Zhoumo ", opposite the newspaper" Le Monde " . He has called on the Chinese online service Wechat just all the pages of moderation by avoiding key words that would have led to censorship.
Precisely because nothing comes out of the party committees, the inner struggle may be raging. It's just about too much: 65 percent of all foreign investment in China and now also 65 percent of all Chinese investment abroad are handled through the financial center Hong Kong. Hong Kong remains China's gateway to the world today. Those who strike risk a recession, even in China, which has been growing ever since.
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There are therefore a number of good reasons for the West to exercise restraint.
Too great is the risk that Hong Kong students will become victims of the surveillance state if the crisis continues. Anyone who applauds them, encourages further action, or shows them in the Western media can not help them later, when the Chinese government strikes, searches homes, and collects the rebels. This happened after the Tiananmen massacre, but also after the Tibetan uprising before the 2008 Olympics. The Tibetans received a lot of support back then in the West, which did not help them as the Chinese security forces later combed their villages and monasteries. Some who disappeared back then have not returned to this day. That's how soon it can happen in the metropolis of Hong Kong.
Those who can help prevent this are not in Washington or Brussels, but in Beijing, the Politburo, and other Communist Party bodies. They are still in charge at the moment. Finally, only one shot has fallen, that of Sunday, without consequences. But to them, the moderate in Beijing, the West must now stand by.
Important is the residual trust between China and the West
This is only possible because the West, like the Chinese journalist Xiao Shu, calls all sides to be moderation, even the students. He must not, for apparently higher moral or even strategic motives, let them run into their own ruin. This includes the recognition of their own powerlessness towards China. Believing Western companies would have to oppose locally as the first Beijing's orders misunderstands the balance of power. In Hong Kong, the CP can do whatever it wants. The economic consequences are not limited to China, but also the rest of the world.
All the more important is the residual trust between China and the West. If it is true that climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, there is every reason to continue to trust the Beijing Politburo. It has a third of all wind turbines and a quarter of all solar systems installed in the world. It massively reduces the share of coal in one's own energy mix. The Beijing authorities are doing a great deal here to encourage free-thinking world citizens in the climate crisis. Do the Hong Kong masts also serve to control the quality of the environment?
The West would be wise to keep open the question of whether China is a partner or an enemy.
