Hong Kong Is Not Tiananmen

I have seen exactly one media report that the protests in Hong Kong have now spread to Guangdong Province.

I have waited a few days for someone else to confirm this, but no one has.

It is probably not true. There are often sporadic protests in China; what this reporter saw or heard may only have been business as usual.

What I hear from foreigners in Guangdong is that the mainland Chinese strongly support the government against the Hong Kong protesters, whom they see as a foreign element. Despite the blood ties, and the longtime insistence on “one nation.”

This makes matters grim for Hong Kong.

Tiananmen was a serious risk to the CCP, because of the danger that their troops might refuse to fire on their own countrymen. This is how revolutions start; when the military turns. But so long as the typical mainland Chinese sees Hong Kong Chinese as other, Hong Kong can be crushed at any moment by troops sent in. Word is that this is already happening: the Hong Kong police have stealthily been replaced by People’s Army regulars wearing the same uniforms.

If the spirit of resistance in Hong Kong really were to spread into Guangdong, the consequences would be dire for the Party. Guangdong is China’s economic hub; it is crowded with migrants who have streamed in from every part of China for better prospects. If the government were to brutally suppress a rebellion there, everyone else in China would likely see their own relatives in that crowd. Moreover, if the authorities successfully crushed a rebellion in Guangdong, they would likely disperse all these migrants back to their original homes—spreading the fires of rebellion far and wide.

And, of course, Guangdong being China’s economic hub, the financial consequences of disruption there would be critical.

Which brings us back to Hong Kong.

It seems likely the only reason the Chinese government is hesitating to crush Hong Kong is the fear of the economic fallout. China’s economy is already looking vulnerable. If Hong Kong was toppled from its roost as a world banking and trading centre, and sanctions and bad PR in reaction to a brutal suppression caused other businesses to pull investments throughout China, the danger to the regime might be greater than the danger from these continuing protests.

Put these things together, and the Chinese government itself must feel itself very vulnerable. It is caught on a knife edge, and struggling to keep its balance.