Indifference to pro-democracy protests highlights degeneration of US foreign policy
Edward Luce
Protesters scuffle with police at Hong Kong's airport © AFP
It would be nice to think that America’s indifference to Hong Kong begins and ends with its president. Donald Trump, to be sure, is failing badly. By insisting Hong Kong’s protest are “riots”, and that China “is going to want to stop that”, Mr Trump has given Beijing every reason to think Washington would not object to a crackdown. To ensure no misunderstanding, Wilbur Ross, Mr Trump’s secretary of commerce, said on Wednesday that Hong Kong was an internal matter for China. “What are we going to do — invade Hong Kong?” he asked.
In a few words, Mr Ross captured the degeneration of US foreign policy: it has been reduced to a choice between doing nothing or going to war. The president has obliterated the space for diplomacy. Mr Trump’s solipsism has also reinforced America’s tendency to see everything as an extension of itself. Among Republican hawks this means celebrating the smattering of Stars and Stripes that have been spotted among the Hong Kong protesters. This is unhelpful since China alleges that America’s “black hand” is behind them. The last thing the demonstrators need is for Washington to portray their civil uprising as pro-US.
On the American left this means ignoring what happens abroad unless Washington is to blame. Until the US is found responsible for Hong Kong’s mess, the liberal left will have no dog in the fight. That would change if Chinese president Xi Jinping sent in the People’s Liberation Army to quash the protests. At that point, Mr Trump’s role in enabling Beijing’s repression would hit the US political radar. The more bodies on Hong Kong’s streets, the greater Mr Trump’s perceived culpability would be. America is the cause; the rest of the world is always an effect.
In that sense, America has the president it deserves. Just as Mr Trump thinks everything is about him, America filters global events through itself. Every country is self-obsessed, of course. But we are in a new era where America can ill-afford to be consumed by narcissism. Hong Kong has three key lessons that America is in danger of missing.
The first is that people always have the capacity to surprise. Nobody foresaw the Hong Kong protests. They are homegrown. As a reporter for the South China Morning Post in the early 1990s, I often heard complaints about how apolitical Hong Kongers were. All they cared about was materialism, went the refrain. Hong Kongers today are taking enormous risks for their autonomy. Nobody asked them to. Neither the CIA nor the arc of history is behind their protests. They may fail or succeed depending on how China reacts. The least they could expect is America’s moral support. The same applies to the fate of Xinjiang’s Uighurs, about 2m of whom are in detention camps. Again, Mr Trump has made it clear he could not care less. Since he is not to blame for their incarceration, America’s left cares less than it should.
Second, Mr Xi’s power is more brittle than many suppose. Mr Trump envies his “president-for-life” status. But Mr Xi is in a quandary. If he ignores the protests, they may achieve some of their goals. This would deflate the awe of Mr Xi’s power. Other parts of China could take their cue from Hong Kong. Taiwan could shift towards independence at its presidential election next January. Should Mr Xi intervene, however, he could tip China into recession by putting a chill on investment. That, in turn, could spark domestic unrest. It is worth stressing that Hong Kongers have dented fears of Mr Xi’s cyber-surveillance state. It turns out that if you put a mask on your face, the facial-recognition software does not work.
Third, in a world where war is unthinkable, diplomacy matters even more. Mr Ross is right to say that the US cannot invade Hong Kong. He forgets that the US did not invade the Soviet Union either. America still won the cold war.
The difference between now and then is that we are focused on America’s political health. People question whether American liberal democracy would survive Mr Trump’s re-election. Others regret America’s withdrawal from active diplomacy. The good news is that people still value freedom in America’s absence.
The US could even draw inspiration from abroad. If Americans paid closer attention, the people of Hong Kong might have a thing or two to teach them.
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