CCP’s repression on HK causes huge wave of resistance | Johnny Lau Yui-siu
Lately, Beijing and the Hong Kong government have been taking a series of ruthless actions to suppress the political space of Hong Kong. The recent events include the heavy sentencing of three Demosisto’s members: Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, and Ivan Lam. Eric Cheung, a legal scholar, has commented that the sentences are not in proportion to their charges. Also, Jimmy Lai, the founder of Next Digital, along with two senior executives, have been charged with fraud. Lai has even been denied bail, which means he has been jailed before the hearing begins. Furthermore, political figures have one after another been forced to go into exile, with the most recent one being Ted Hui, the lawmaker from the Democratic Party. He has also quit the party to prevent the other party members from being dragged into the mud.
The CCP attacks fiercely, ignoring Hongkongers’ feelings and opinions, and is oblivious to the international concern and sanctions. Why is it so aggressive? If you understand its mentality, then you would know how weak, sane, and even anti-intellectual it actually is.
First of all, we can see that the U.S. is the only “enemy” that the CCP is wary of. It considers the time between the end of the U.S. election and the transfer of power as a window period to “suss out each other’s cards.” Moreover, the CCP believes Biden’s China policy would not be so tough as Trump’s and therefore wants to use this opportunity to “go all out” and commanded Carrie Lam to do everything possible to increase the future’s clampdowns.
Secondly, these aggressive tactics are the extensions of the CCP’s 19th fourth plenum. After the fourth plenum, the CCP openly showed that it “must tightly grasp the full governance of Hong Kong.” Afterward, it “cleaned up” the Legislative Council (LegCo) by disqualifying four pan-democrat (Pan-dem) lawmakers, which led to the mass resignations of the rest of the pan-dem lawmakers; it forced the media chief to get rid of staff, such as i-Cable TV laying off a large number of employees from the news team; it further promotes the brainwash education via the Education Bureau and deregisters teachers who “disobey”; the Hospital Authority wants to recover the salaries from the staff who has been on strike...there are endless of similar examples.
For the CCP, it has not yet achieved the goal of “tightly grasp the full governance” and would therefore only keep piling on the pressure. It is estimated to get worse in the next two years, as the CCP worries that Hong Kong might become the place where “anti-Xi Jinping” power gathers before the 20th Congress, and will therefore continue to eliminate enemies.
Besides, the CCP still has two important goals that it has yet reached: one is to destroy Hong Kong’s judicial independence system so it can have peace of mind; second is the brainwash project being implemented not only on youngsters and students but on all the Hong Kong citizens until it gets a “permanent effect” and completely extinguishes the “anti-Beijing” roots.
In the past, the CCP is already scared to death seeing the exchange of political and democratic processes between Taiwan and Hong Kong; since the implementation of Hong Kong national security law, more Hongkongers migrated to Taiwan, including people from the political and public opinion sectors. The increase of political links among people is seriously worrying for the CCP.
When facing the people’s sentiment and international backlash, a normal political power would try its best to resolve the conflicts. Not the CCP. Scholars like Zhang Baijia, former Deputy Director of the Party History Research Center of the Central Committee, and Ezra Vogel, a retired professor at Harvard University, have recently said that the CCP should now do more lax things like resuming the visa of foreign media to the mainland. However, the CCP has chosen to ignore this advice. On the contrary, it put a notch up and suppresses people from the media like Jimmy Lai. The international voice of support for Lai gets even louder. So the CCP is being stubborn and chooses the evil way. What kind of consequence would it get?
In fact, the acts of the CCP would only raise more concern from the western countries, which will provide more protection for the Hongkongers. The western camps would gather more rapidly, and a force formed by the democratic countries would further contain the CCP.
Antony Blinken, who has already been nominated as the next U.S. Secretary of State, has publicly mentioned that, during Trump’s term, the relationships between the U.S. and its allies have worsened, especially the conflicts with the European countries have become more obvious; therefore, the U.S. will speed up in repairing these relationships. That means the CCP’s tactic of separating Europe and the U.S. may no longer work.
What we should be aware of is that Yang Jiechi, a senior CCP official who is in charge of foreign affairs, has quietly revealed that the CCP has amended its direction on foreign policy. Previously, the CCP put the large countries diplomacy (Europe and the U.S.) as the top priority and the relations with surrounding countries (ASEAN and Asian countries) as number two; currently, it has put its relations with surrounding countries as number one, ahead of the large countries diplomacy. In other words, since the start of the China-U.S. trade war in 2018, it has expanded to conflicts between the CCP and the western countries, which forced the CCP to change its diplomatic focus. In addition, the big political setback of the CCP and its tough attitude towards Taiwan and Hong Kong have made the western countries believe that they have to “anti-CCP” together because communism and its system have become the political virus of the century and must be going against.
Also, although the CCP has changed its foreign policy focus, it does not mean it can reinforce the relations with its surrounding countries. For example, Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson for China’s Department of Foreign Affairs, used a doctored photo to insult Australia and led to the Australian Prime Minister demanding an apology from China. This diplomatic storm has not yet been calmed. Therefore, although Australia has signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with China, as the CCP is making enemies everywhere, it would not end well. Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, recently made an urgent trip to Japan and South Korea but came back with nothing. It shows that the CCP has already been cut off from the civilized world.
Lastly, the suppression of the CCP has forced a bunch of pro-democratic people to go into exile. It is possible that these people would again get together and become an overseas power that is against the CCP regime. Like Sun Zhongshan in history, how would the different power from the overseas democratic activists after the Jun. 4 event and within the mainland develop? No one knows, but it should not be ignored.
So the CCP thinks repression can conquer everything. But instead, it has caused a huge wave of resistance. It can only blame itself for being too reliant on power, violence, and money and ends up being the world’s enemy.
(Johnny Lau Yui-siu, current affairs commentator)
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