Jonathan Mirsky

Am I wrong to fear another Tiananmen?

I can't look at Hong Kong without thinking about how far the Chinese Communist Party will go – and how little we'll do to stop them

For Beijing, the tens of thousands of protestors choking the centre of Hong Kong are such a dangerous outrage that mainland media cannot report on them. The real outrage is this: China agreed to hold free elections in 2017, but now a Beijing-appointed committee will determine whether candidates for chief executive can be relied on to toe Beijing’s line.

On 6 September, a Chinese embassy official wrote to the Times that in 2017 there would be a one-man one-vote election in Hong Kong. He omitted to mention that Beijing has selected the committee that will approve the candidates. On 15 September, Ambassador Liu Xiaoming wrote to the Daily Telegraph attacking Lord Patten, Hong Kong’s last governor, for criticising Beijing’s arrangements for the election and for claiming that those arrangements are a denial of democracy.

It is not unusual for Beijing to declare that black is white. What is scandalous is that the Foreign Office immediately ‘welcomed’ Beijing’s ‘confirmation’ of election ‘through universal suffrage’. Whoever wrote that in Whitehall knew it to be false.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) tanks guard a
Chinese troops forcibly marched on Tiananmen Square to end a weeks-long occupation by student protestors, 1989 Photo: Getty

In one sense it is obvious why Beijing has laid down this gauntlet. It is true that Hong Kong, semi-autonomous since 1997, enjoys an essentially free press and freedom of speech, nor are there strictures on its annual candlelight vigils attended by huge crowds commemorating the Tiananmen killings in June 1989. But since 1997, its Chief Executives have been selected by Beijing. What Hong Kong people had been waiting for, in their orderly way, was the day in 2017 when that top job would be theirs to vote for. Now angry, they are demanding the resignation of the current Chief Executive, C.Y.

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