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A journalist has asked me how likely it is that the Chinese Communist Party will order the People's Liberation Army to quash Hong Kong's pro-democracy popular uprising. I don't think that this will happen any time soon. Yet a far more sinister escalation is already under way /1
When on 21 July protesters hurled black paint at the Chinese national emblem this was a very provocative and highly symbolic act of civil disobedience. On the political level it could be interpreted as a reaffirmation of Hong Kong's quest for self-determination /2
On the psychological level activists hereby told the central government that Hong Kong citizens would not be bullied into submission. This iconoclasm Made in Hong Kong will not be lost on Xi Jinping, China's self-styled 'president for life' /3
We need to remember that Xi Jinping occupies the three roles of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President of the People's Republic of China and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. He has considerable power and is willing to use it /4
When Xi talks about China's national rejuvenation, the underlying tenets are a radical revisionist and expansionist domestic and foreign policy. For his aspirations to succeed Xi needs to pacify the periphery. He is willing to pay almost any price to achieve this objective /5
By publicising the discolored national emblem through party-state controlled media the CCP is deliberately whipping up nationalist fervour among mainland Chinese citizens and is granting license for people to protest against imagined 'enemies' of China /6
It is highly concerning that Xi Jinping seems to be willing to unleash intra-ethnic violence to suppress Hong Kong's struggle for democracy /7
This is evident from China's Consulate-General in Brisbane, Australia who praised physical assaults by mainland Chinese overseas students on peaceful protesters at a pro-Hong Kong rally at University of Queensland /8
When an elderly man from mainland China assaulted local protesters at the arrival hall of Hong Kong International Airport today this incident was reported rather differently through Chinese state media: here the traveller was portrayed as a victim of bullying by Hong Kongers /9
I would say that we are still very far away from any potential scenario which involves the People's Liberation Army. That said, Xi Jinping's strategy to weaponise mainland Chinese citizens against their compatriots in Hong Kong is still a reckless move /10
We need to bear in mind that a local ethnic between Han Chinese and Uyghurs in a factory in Guangdong province in June 2009—the Shaoguan incident—triggered the ethnic violence that rocked Urumqi just a month later /11
Following the 2009 unrest in Xinjiang the CCP decided to embark in a process of forced ethnic, cultural and religious assimilation. Both Tibetans and Uyghurs have been victims of such forced assimilation /12
The CCP's crimes against humanity are now globally known: more than 1,5 million Uyghurs & Kazakhs are being held against their will in concentration camps, which where first denied by party-state authorities and later euphemistically labelled as 'vocational training centres' /13
The CCP's new hardline policy towards ethnic minorities is to "break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins" /14
Given the CCP's willingness to sacrifice almost all of its soft power and global reputation with the concentration camps in Xinjiang, a future hard punishment against Hong Kong is equally conceivable /15
Yet there is a big difference between the situation in HK now and the flaring up of inter-ethnic violence in Guangdong in 2009. Due to its global importance as a financial hub in East Asia, HK citizens are globally very mobile. Many young Hong Kongers study or work abroad /16
By granting mainland Chinese citizens license to pick an argument or fight with pro-democracy-minded Hong Kongers Xi is unleashing an intra-ethnic conflict which will not be locally confined but which soon will spread to all corners of the world with Chinese diaspora members /17
I should point out that this is not my original idea. @dktatlow made this point earlier today: Hong Kong's struggle for freedom and democracy may be local, but the reverberations from this fight against CCP autocracy will be felt globally. I agree with Didi /18
If this scenario is correct this would mean that any local intra-ethnic altercation, whether in HK, in mainland China, or anywhere else could trigger major ethnic violence, not unlike the Urumqi riots in July 2019. This is the scenario we should worry about most /End
