Hong Kong Is Not Tiananmen

Thousands of protesters gather in Central, Hong Kong. Picture from
BBC News originally AFP.

Over the last few weeks thousands of Hong Kong residents have taken part in a mass civil disobedience campaign aimed at protesting the indirect totalitarian rule of the communist regime in Beijing. As the pro-democracy movement continues to grow many in the media and public have begun to draw comparisons between the protests in Hong Kong today and the Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing 25 years ago. Memories of PLA (People’s Liberation Army) tanks and infantry moving into the central Beijing square have prompted fears that the Communist party will respond to the current unrest with a similar swift and decisive military crackdown of Central, Hong Kong.

Students gather in Tiananmen Square 1989. Picture from
CNN.

While it might be a tempting comparative exercise to equate the two movements, stark differences exist which lessen the likelihood of a Tiananmen repeat in Central. Four factors highlight the disparity between the two movements: environment; scope; location; and media. In considering these elements with the substantive realities of the two protests in mind one overarching narrative emerges distinguishing 1989 and today, the Chinese Communist party does not view the Occupy Central movement as a threat to its hold on power and control of the Chinese government. By contrast the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square was a direct threat to the ruling party, one which spooked high ranking party members enough to send the military in to violently quell the dissidents.  Unlike in 1989 the Communist party will most likely not respond with military force to quell the unrest in Hong Kong today.

International Environment

One of the differences which exist between then and now is the international environment in which the two protests took place. When Chinese students started to gather in Tiananmen Square in April of 1989 they did so in the midst of the anti-Communist revolution which was beginning to sweep across Eastern Europe. Earlier in the year the Hungarian regime had announced the adoption of the democracy package calling on the implementation of democratic reforms while the communist government in Poland had just agreed with the Solidarity movement to set up free parliamentary elections.

In addition, protests in other eastern bloc countries such as Romania and Czechoslovakia left doubt as to the sustainability of communist regimes throughout the world. The protests came in light of the adoption of the economic reforms of glasnost and perestroika among Eastern Bloc nations, similar to the economic reforms adopted under Deng Xiaoping in China during the late 70s. It was not unreasonable to believe that the protests were a direct result of the economic liberalizations undertaken by socialist states, and could lead to the overthrow of those governments by popular movements spurred by the continuing unrest. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders were cognizant of the developments in Europe and the fragility of their own government as the protests in China continued through the month of May. Recognition of that fragility among high ranking members in the CCP regime precipitated the decision to send the PLA in to quash the protests in early June.

Whereas the Tiananmen protests occurred during the anti-communist revolutionary wave that was sweeping across the globe in the late 80s, the current Hong Kong protests are taking place in a less volatile environment. Compared to the late 80s the CCP has stabilized its hold over China through the centralization of political power and the adoption of various economic reforms. Given the relative stability of the government, and the lack of an international movement which could possibly imperil the party today, the CCP will most likely not employ the use of the military to suppress the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Scope

Protesters in Guangzhou on June 5 1989. Picture from Guangzhou
Yearbook 1990 and Duihua Research.

A second major factor differentiating the two movements is the breadth and scope of the protests.  In 1989 the protests which began in Beijing spread to other cities on the mainland. Shanghai and the interior cities of Xi’an, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing and Chengdu all experienced almost simultaneous social unrest by student protests organized to mimic the one in Beijing.

The spread of the protests to areas outside the nation’s capital showed that the mass discontent among the student population wasn’t just isolated to Beijing, but was evident throughout the country. What had begun as a small student protest had sparked larger protests in some of China’s largest cities, including the capital, and had the potential of spreading further within the country.

Today the Occupy Central movement is confined to the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. On the mainland few are even aware of the protests. Through its firewall, nicknamed the great firewall of China, the Chinese government has restricted the mainland population’s access to online content regarding the current protests in Hong Kong. Few have the resources to circumvent the restrictions, and those who do either lack the wherewithal to search for the specific content or are members of the upper and middle classes of Chinese society who have benefited from the political and economic stability maintained by the communist government and would be hesitant, if not opposed, to introduce an unstable element into the current environment such as a political protest.

The difference in scope between the 1989 and 2014 movements isn’t limited to just geography. 1989 was highlighted by a broad ideological mentality with the goal of democratic governance. The Tiananmen protests had the specific aim of ending the communist system of governance throughout China.

Juxtaposed, Occupy Central has made it clear that its goal is not revolution but rather reform, and that the democratic reforms it seeks is regionally specific to Hong Kong.  Their goals are explicitly tailored to voting and elections within their own local government and the relationship between the Special Administrative Region and the central government in Beijing. Whereas the students in 1989 were looking to overthrow the prevailing national system, Occupy Central is only looking to tweak the system specific to its own locality.

Were Beijing to acquiesce to all of the demands of the Occupy Central movement the Communist party would still emerge in the aftermath in control of the People’s Republic of China, albeit with less direct control of Hong Kong. However, it would still maintain its monopoly over the organs and entities of the Chinese government, and would still maintain sovereign control over the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.

In the end the geographical and objective scope of the Occupy Central movement does not pose a threat to the CCP’s control over mainland China.

Location

Tiananmen Square is not a stranger to student protests and demonstrations which serve as the catalyst to larger political movements. Sitting at the entrance of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the seat of imperial Chinese power during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Tiananmen Square serves as both a strategic and symbolic location for the public to communicate its discontent with the prevailing government.

A map of central Beijing, with Tiananmen Square highlighted in yellow.
Zhongnanhai, located around Zhonghai lake directly adjacent to the
Forbidden City (in pink), is the location of the Central Headquarters of the
Chinese Communist Party. 

Although the Forbidden City no longer houses any branch or organ of Chinese governance, the entities of the People’s Republic of China were removed to locations adjacent to and in close proximity to Tiananmen. Under the current communist regime Tiananmen still serves as the historic center of China’s government.

Student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1919 were the catalyst to the May Fourth Movement, a political and intellectual movement which was sparked by Chinese outrage towards the Versailles Treaty. Many communist scholars credit the May Fourth Movement as the start of the revolution which brought communism to China and ultimately to power. Every communist leader in China is aware of the correlation between Tiananmen Square and political protests, and that student protests which take place in the square have the potential to morph into a nationwide movement.

When student protests began forming in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the symbolic, strategic and historical value of the location was on the mind of every member of the Chinese leadership. Recognition of that value was one of the many elements  

Hong Kong might be a leading world financial center, but it is not the capital of China. None of the central Chinese government entities are located in the Central neighborhood of Hong Kong. Nor does Central carry the same symbolism or historical value as Tiananmen.

Media

Throughout the protests in 1989, the Chinese government restricted foreign media access to the protesters and the area of protest.

Tiananmen Square after the military moved in to suppress the protests.
Image from International Christian Concern.

The protesters themselves were limited to relatively primitive communication technology. They lacked access to direct communication with the outside world and the ability to upload imagery from the protests to a worldwide cyber network.

Even with the relative limitations in communication and technology images of various stages in the protests did emerge from the event and were released to the western media. As a result many Western nations responded with economic sanctions, and super-national organizations followed suit with the World Bank suspending loans to the People’s Republic.

More importantly Western named brands temporarily pulled out of China, similar to their abandonment of South Africa in light of the growing international resentment of Apartheid during the 80s. While the effects of the economic repercussions were felt only for a short time, China’s economy began to boom in the early 90s the sanctions were lifted and brands returned in force to the mainland, they still had a noticeable effect on the economy.

Today we live in a world where cell phones can record images and upload them in real time to an international network of people located throughout the world. Once the data is loaded on to the internet it stays there, and outside of mainland China the Chinese government has little power to constrain the content.

Were a similar reaction to Tiananmen in 1989 to occur in Hong Kong today the images and videos would be streamed unfiltered throughout the world. Such an event would raise the possibility of another western brand boycott. A boycott would raise serious problems for the CCP for two reasons. First, a brand boycott would serve to hurt an already weakened Chinese economy on the precipice of a construction bubble. Since the economic reforms of the early 90s the CCP has longed recognized that its existence is unquestionably tied to the economic performance of the country. Continued economic growth equates to a complicit population, while an economic contraction creates a restless and unhappy populace prone to political and social movements.

Second, a Western brand boycott would deprive the Chinese population of products it craves. Companies such as Apple and BMW have become ubiquitous with wealth and a signpost for achievement within Chinese society. To deprive the upper and middle classes of these brands would create tremors within certain segments of the Chinese population, the very people who the CCP is trying to appease and is relying on to maintain stability. Withdrawal of these products from the Chinese market won’t necessarily start a revolution but would expose a vulnerability within the Chinese economy, an element which could lead to instability and political resentment of the current regime.

While the current environment in Hong Kong doesn't directly threaten the communist regime in Beijing, the state of the media and modern day technology can alter the existing equation if the CCP decides to suppress the movement with the military.

Central’s Future

Compared to Tiananmen Square in 1989 the current protests in Central, Hong Kong pose little risk to the CCP’s control over the Chinese Government. In their present form the protests are contained in the periphery of the Chinese state, in an area of the country where the exercise of the Communist Party’s sovereignty has always been truncated. On the other hand, a military crackdown of the Occupy Central movement along the scale of what was seen in Tiananmen Square in 1989 poses a high risk of undercutting the present stability on the mainland.

In 1989 the CCP was faced with a decision where if they did not act then the party would have been overthrown. Today the formula is reversed where the action can serve to undermine the party’s control.

In the West we have a tendency to regard non democratic governments as having a propensity to behave in a belligerent manner exercising control and steadfast devotion through totalitarian policies. But while these dictatorial states promote the maintenance of their regimes as the highest state priority, they are still rational actors. To lose sight of this creates a false sense of paranoia, one in which we expect these states to always behave in the worst possible manner, with brute force disregarding human rights. 

All this isn’t to say that a repressive military operation to curb the protests in Hong Kong won’t occur. As the situation currently stands a military crackdown in Central is unlikely to occur. However, the calculus of the Chinese leadership will change if the protests spread or begin to garner support on the mainland. Additionally, a protracted occupation of Central which could begin to threaten Beijing’s sovereignty over the Special Administrative Region, might also tip the scale.

Without a doubt Beijing has drawn a red line. However that line has been drawn with more flexibility than the one in 1989.