A protester gathers with others near the Legislative Council in Hong Kong. Photos / AP
A protester gathers with others near the Legislative Council in Hong Kong. Photos / AP
Days after he pushed through a measure that would grant him lifetime rule, Chinese President Xi Jinping closed the Communist Party's 19th Congress in 2017 with a sweeping address that touched on the thorniest issues of all: Hong Kong and Taiwan.
In semiautonomous Hong Kong and practically independent Taiwan, Beijing would "develop and strengthen the ranks of patriots who love our country," Xi promised the gathered party elite to thunderous applause.
"Blood," Xi added, "is thicker than water."
Historic numbers of protesters in Hong Kong's streets and a political crisis engulfing its leader Carrie Lam in the past week highlighted an enduring conundrum facing Xi: For decades, Beijing has asked the former British colony for loyalty, if not love. Time and again, its people have responded with distrust, if not loathing.
Twenty-two years after regaining control over Hong Kong after more than 150 years of British rule, the Beijing Government's efforts to win over residents' hearts and minds appear to be stumbling, raising doubts not only about Xi's long-term strategy for Hong Kong but also his overtures toward Taiwan, the island he seeks to absorb.
Since 2017, Xi has made similar pitches to encourage both populations - one under Chinese rule, one defiantly self-ruled - to willingly embrace the Communist Party. He has guaranteed political semiautonomy, promised economic prosperity and appealed to shared Chinese ancestry.
He has failed to convince.
"Beijing has misinterpreted Hong Kong's culture, psyche and feelings," said Anson Chan, the former No. 2 official in Hong Kong.
"Hong Kong people will not bend to the will of the Communist totalitarian state. If only Beijing would understand what makes Hong Kong tick, what are the values we hold dear, then they can use that energy to benefit both China and Hong Kong.
"Instead, they have this mentality of control."
As many as two million people took to Hong Kong's streets, protest organisers said. They emerged in record numbers even after Lam, the Hong Kong Chief Executive backed by Beijing, suspended an extradition proposal that she said was not foisted on her by mainland China.
The demonstrators' complaints centered on Lam's perceived intransigence and the deployment of tear gas and rubber bullets last week by riot police. But a sea of placards and banners connecting Lam - a lifelong Hong Kong civil servant - to the Communist Party conveyed a far deeper suspicion of the Chinese Government that has been bubbling since 2014.
A protester on Sunday clenches his fist as tens of thousands of protesters march on the streets to stage a protest against the unpopular extradition bill.
That year, Beijing issued documents that outlined its supreme control over Hong Kong courts and elections. In recent years, more controls have tightened the reins on Hong Kong's freewheeling politics and media.
"The extradition amendment was just the last straw on the camel's back," said Alan Leong, a former legislator and chairman of the opposition Civic Party.
With its authority unquestioned at home, the Communist Party struggles to deal with a territory with a mature and rambunctious civil society, Leong added. "You talk reason with Hong Kong," he said. "You don't rule Hong Kong."
A decades-long tracking poll by Hong Kong University shows that about 38 per cent of Hong Kong citizens feel "proud to be a citizen of China" compared with 47 per cent in 1997, when excitement was high over the handover from Britain. Today, 55 per cent of young people between 18 and 29 have a negative view of the central Chinese Government compared to 13 per cent who see Beijing positively.
Chinese leaders have pondered for years how to reverse those trends.
Beijing is accelerating an infrastructure and investment plan dubbed the "Greater Bay Area" that would open up jobs in dynamic technology hubs such as Shenzhen to residents of Hong Kong, a declining financial nexus with a gaping income gap.
Earlier this year, pro-Beijing officials in Hong Kong reiterated the perennial suggestion to introduce more Chinese history classes in Hong Kong classrooms and promote cultural exchanges with the mainland.
More than 25 percent of Hong Kong's population of 7.4 million people protested this weekend. By proportion, these are the largest protests in modern history. Absolutely stunning. pic.twitter.com/5YAR1xDMjT
But attempts to ignite a "love of country, love of Hong Kong," as the catchphrase goes, have often fizzled.
A 2012 effort to introduce patriotic education was greeted with street protests and shelved. In 2014, a Chinese cabinet white paper requiring Hong Kong judges to "love the country" was condemned by the local legal community, including a former chief justice.
Months after that, Hong Kong was rocked by a 79-day street occupation by young protesters demanding universal suffrage and by others who sought something more radical: independence.
In response to Hong Kong's defiance, the Chinese leadership appears likely to double down on patriotic education and hasten mainland investment and immigration into Hong Kong, said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at Hong Kong University.
It's a familiar playbook, Lam said. One extreme example is the restive region of Xinjiang, where the party has sought to instill patriotism in ethnic Uighurs through forced indoctrination on a massive scale while promoting intermarriage and migration of Han, China's main ethnic group.
"Xi has realised the long-term solution is Sinicise Hong Kong in much the same way as Tibet and Xinjiang," Lam said. "Changing the makeup of the population will be the most effective."
Today's The Daily podcast from the New York Times is on Hong Kong. @mikiebarb and crew for made me sound far smarter than I felt after yesterday's protests. And Amos Yip, out marching a week before his high school graduation, was a great interview https://t.co/dIXyacCgdI
But the city poses a particular conundrum for a Communist Party that has staked its legitimacy on a narrative of defending ethnic Chinese against Western and Japanese colonial powers.
The party believed it would be "historical destiny, a historical inevitability" that Hong Kong would fall into its embrace after more than a century of British rule, said Maura Cunningham, a historian and co-author of China in the 21st Century.
"The problem is Hong Kong has not gone willingly," Cunningham said. "Instead we see the opposite happening."
This past week, the central Government and its allies in Hong Kong downplayed the possibility that a genuine antipathy toward Beijing was on display on the city's streets.
A day after organisers said one million people took to the streets on June 9 chanting "no China extradition," the state-run China Daily newspaper described the opposite: 800,000 people were supporting the bill, it reported.
China's Foreign Ministry and pro-Beijing legislators repeatedly described the uprising as fanned or engineered by Washington and London.
"It's not the endgame, because the Hong Kong government and Beijing just turned a whole generation of students from citizens to dissidents." Freed Hong Kong democracy campaigner Joshua Wong on the ongoing protests in the city https://t.co/y4KXsTcR6ppic.twitter.com/2T20e22fFq
On Monday, Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper backed by the Communist Party, blasted the US consul-general for meeting activists and warned readers that "citizens suspect US intelligence agents to be involved in the riots."
Yet even as Beijing's proxies heaped blame on foreign meddlers, its official voice in Hong Kong has recently turned conciliatory with the public. The liaison office said the central Government paid "great attention" to the marches and rallies and "supports, respects and understands" Lam's decision to suspend the extradition bill "to listen to more views from all sectors of society."
The setback suffered by Hong Kong's pro-Beijing camp is reverberating in Taiwan, where President Tsai Ing-wen has jumped on the opportunity to warn about the dangers of engaging with Beijing.
Taiwan's voters are currently mulling a choice between Tsai, who is bitterly opposed by China and leans towards declaring formal independence, and candidates who advocate rapprochement with their giant neighbour - and favour enjoying the expected economic fruits.
In a landmark January speech aimed at Taiwan, Xi promised the island's population the same political freedoms as Hong Kong if the Taiwanese came to the table for unification talks. Otherwise, all options were on the table, Xi warned, including a military takeover.
That offer seemed hollow to hundreds of protesters who gathered outside the Taiwanese legislature, chanting: "Today's Hong Kong is tomorrow's Taiwan."
"More and more people are aware of the situation in Hong Kong," said Lin Fei-fan, an activist who organised the Taipei rally. "Once Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, this will probably be our future."
