Police in Hong Kong arrested people accused of being pro-democracy demonstrators and activists this week during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The crackdown on dissent has grown in recent years and this is particularly true in Hong Kong where Beijing used the pandemic as an excuse to enforce greater control over the region.
The crushing of any critique of the government is part of China’s shifting stance on many issues. China has become more bellicose in its rhetoric and behavior. The pandemic provided a perfect opportunity for the regime to retreat behind its walls, and basically begin a process of confrontation and cut-off from the West, in which China will seek to grow its influence among authoritarian regimes and the global south. All the while, it will be inching closer to more confrontations with not only the US and the West but western democratic partners and allies in Asia, such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India.
What worries Beijing the most?
A 67-year-old woman was detained in Hong Kong. BBC noted that “she was arrested while carrying flowers near Victoria Park, where vigils had been held for decades.” People can’t hold flowers or have a silent vigil. The authoritarian regimes are becoming more authoritarian around the world. In Turkey, even though there was a recent election, journalists and dissidents have been forced to flee the country or imprisoned. Opposition politicians have been rounded up, accused of being “terrorists.”
In Russia, a poem can get one landed in prison, even a child’s drawing. Because authoritarian regimes now have access to the most powerful tools of social media and big tech censorship, they can crush almost every aspect of dissent. They haven’t yet gotten to the point of regulating how people think, in a truly Orwellian universe, but there is no doubt they are heading in that direction.
When I was in high school in the 1990s, around a half-decade after the 1989 protests were crushed in Tiananmen square, one of our classrooms had a large poster in French that said “PLACE TIAN AN MEN” commemorating the massacre. In those days the protests in China would have seemed to be part of the supposedly liberalized process of China. We were told that China was going to become liberal and peaceful and trade would make China rich and we would all get along in the new world order. It was the 1990s, and the US was astride the world, sending troops to Haiti, Somalia, Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, and other countries. We were doing humanitarian intervention and then “pre-emption” and “nation-building,” supporting democracy and “global policing.”
Police detain a woman in downtown on the 34th anniversary of the 1989 Beijing’s Tiananmen Square crackdown, near where the candlelight vigil is usually held, in Hong Kong, China June 4, 2023. (credit: TYRONE SIU/ REUTERS)China was doing something else. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping sought a foreign policy that made China appear weaker than it was; summed up by “observe calmly, secure our position, cope with affairs calmly, hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership.” Over time it became clear this was a facade between 2011 and 2014. Deng’s leadership had by this time given way to Jiang Zemin and then Hu Jintao. By this time some were predicting China was biding time for revenge. The Economist said in 2010 “less biding and hiding.”
After Xi Jinping came to power the Belfer Center at Harvard had an interview with Kevin Rudd, of the Asia Society, “for 35 years or more now, there’s been a trend in China. These politics initiated by Deng are meant to normalize the functions of the Chinese state, as opposed to the party always dominating the state. Xi Jinping has turned that trend around, and we now see an assertion or re-assertion of the party’s absolute power. That’s the first point.”
It’s clear where this is heading. A Chinese warship recently conducted an unsafe maneuver near a US warship. A Chinese warplane performed an “aggressive maneuver” near a US RC-135 plane days ago in late May. CNN noted that “the US Indo-Pacific Command said, a Chinese destroyer had cut across the bow of the USS Chung-Hoon during a joint exercise between American and Canadian navy vessels in the Taiwan Strait.”
Sensing that it is time to unite the authoritarians to challenge the US in the Pacific, Russia launched a naval drill this week. Moscow state media TASS said that the “Pacific Fleet forces have started practicing tasks of the operational exercise kicked off in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk, the Russian Defense Ministry told reporters.” From June 5 to 20 under the guidance of Admiral Viktor Liina, the Fleet Commander, Russia will send 60 ships and dozens of aircraft to sea. Moscow’s drills may be a far cry from the failures of the Russian navy more than a century ago at the Battle of Tsushima, but overall Russia can’t challenge the West in the Pacific. China is another matter, it wants to challenge the US slowly, like an anaconda hunts.
It has been almost 200 years since the first serious interactions began between the US and China. The first US Navy ship to arrive in China was the USS Congress in 1820. In the 1830s the first American missionaries arrived in China and the US gained treaty access to various ports in the 1840s. In those days the US and China were much different countries, smaller on the world stage. Today they appear headed for collision and the authoritarian tendencies that occurred after Tiananmen are part of that process. The two processes are linked; the decision by China to pursue a policy of hiding its intentions, and the West’s view that everything would turn out fine.
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