SinoInsight 1
The people of Hong Kong held protests for the thirteenth straight week over the weekend. In what has become a pattern, the bulk of the protesters held peaceful rallies or marches where they call on the Hong Kong government to meet five demands related to a controversial proposed extradition bill, while a smaller “brave martial clique” (勇武派) deploys radical methods of protest.
Key protest incidents on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 include:
- Police fire tear gas and blue dye from water cannons at protesters to disperse them away from government buildings. Protesters say that the blue dye was used so that the police can identify them and make arrests later.
- According to a widely circulated video, Hong Kong riot police are seen deploying pepper sprays and beating passengers in a train. From the video, police brutality against the train passengers was unprovoked.
- Protesters discovered several undercover police within their ranks and confronted them in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park at about 9:00 p.m. Hong Kong time on Aug. 31. During the skirmish, the undercover police fired two live rounds in the air to disperse the protesters.
- A black-clad “protester” was filmed firing a pepper ball rifle at protesters. The “protester” was joined by other black-clad individuals wearing glow sticks.
- A photographer from Getty Images took a picture of a well-equipped “protester” with a Glock-like pistol in a holster strapped to his leg; from some angles, the pistol appeared to be an Airsoft gun. The same “protester” was later photographed by others hurling a Molotov cocktail towards the police and arresting a protester.
- On Sept. 1, the protesters carried out various tactics to block access to Hong Kong International Airport. Many responded to calls online to drive to the airport to pick up protesters; as a result, a toll road leading to the airport was heavily congested from early afternoon to late at night. The Hong Kong government suspended train transportation to the airport and bus service to the airport was halted. Airlines canceled dozens of flights. To get to the airport, many plane passengers ended up walking several miles with their luggage in tow.
OUR TAKE
1. After the People’s Liberation Army carried out its annual troop rotation to Hong Kong on Aug. 29, there was some speculation that the CCP could be planning to make a big move against the protesters over the weekend. Instead, Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 saw the now “usual” police brutality on display and more undercover police activity.
The “lack” of PLA activity or a big CCP crackdown this past weekend does not surprise us. As we explained in recent articles on the Hong Kong situation and the Aug. 29 edition of this newsletter, the CCP is very likely “advancing to retreat” on Hong Kong will unlikely deploy the PLA to launch a crackdown. Rather, “the CCP will continue to bolster the Hong Kong police ranks with undercover paramilitary forces (People’s Armed Police and other security forces) and use high-pressure tactics (tear gas, brutal beatings, mass arrests, etc.) to deal with the protesters.”
2. In July, we wrote that the CCP would rely on incitement tactics to fracture and suppress the protests in Hong Kong, including the deployment of agents to infiltrate the protest movement. This is becoming more and more obvious as undercover police activity repeatedly gets exposed by the media or on social media, or in cases where the police unwittingly reveal themselves, such as the undercover cop firing live rounds in Victoria Park.
The CCP does not need an excuse to carry out incitement tactics. Even if there was no radical “brave martial clique,” the CCP will still find ways to incite violence during the various rallies and demonstrations to give the Hong Kong authorities an excuse to clamp down on the whole protest movement.
Meanwhile, the “brave martial clique” and those in Hong Kong who feel that they have no alternative but radical means to challenge the Hong Kong government and the CCP must realize that they can neither defeat the CCP nor gain international sympathy by continuing with their current tactics. Indeed, violence in Hong Kong only serves to bolster CCP propaganda and its other external disinformation efforts, while gradually eroding the protest movement’s moral high ground.
3. Violence and incitement are classic tactics which the CCP use to justify heavy-handed “stability maintenance” work. While this form of “stability maintenance” is very effective on the mainland where generations of Chinese are exposed to CCP brainwashing and are conditioned by authoritarian rule, it has proven to be much less effective in Hong Kong where the people enjoy greater freedoms and the rule of law.
If anything, the CCP’s “stability maintenance” work in Hong Kong appears to be backfiring. In recent weeks, more and more people in Hong Kong, especially the more passive older generation, are increasingly voicing their support for the protest movement and condemning police brutality in videos, media interviews, and on social media.
4. We have written several times that the CCP is likely looking to resolve the Hong Kong situation before Oct. 1 (the anniversary of the PRC’s founding) and the 2020 Taiwan presidential election. To achieve this outcome, the CCP will both attempt to terrify and placate the Hong Kong protesters. That means more heavy-handed suppression tactics by the Hong Kong police and mass arrests. The CCP is also fully capable of sacrificing Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam and the Hong Kong police in a manner which allows them to save face while “meeting” some of the key protester demands.
The CCP will execute its Hong Kong operations with an eye on international society reaction. And judging from the relatively tepid response from the United States and the rest of the world to the Hong Kong situation, we are not optimistic that the violence and chaos is going away any time soon. As long as the CCP believes that the international community is in favor of restoring order in Hong Kong and preserving the “one country, two systems” model, it will keep pushing, but not break, the limits of international tolerance. Put another way, the CCP will see to it that protesters are beaten until their bruise and bleed, but will stop short of killing them (there is no guarantee, however, that unrestrained police brutality will not lead to tragedy.) Meanwhile, the international community will likely continue to criticize the CCP and police brutality in Hong Kong, but will stop short of imposing sanctions.
We believe that there will not be a Tiananmen-style incident in Hong Kong given the current status quo. But unless the international community decides to get tough on the CCP over Hong Kong, the Hong Kong people will suffer greater and greater pain and hardships as the CCP labors to end the protest movement.
SinoInsight 2
At about 11:21 p.m. Hong Kong time on Aug. 30, an off-duty police officer from the Kwai Chung district station was suddenly attacked by three men who were clad in black or gray garments at the local train station. One of the men wielded a knife and wounded the police officer’s back and limbs. An ambulance sent the police officer to the nearby Princess Margaret Hospital for treatment.
Around 11:41 p.m., Oriental Daily News, a pro-establishment Hong Kong newspaper, published a short news item on the attack on the police officer. The report provided details like the direction in which the assailants had escaped after attacking the officer and the fact that the area was cordoned off. Finally, Oriental Daily News also managed to grab a photo of the sealed-off crime scene and policemen at Princess Margaret Hospital. Many observers expressed deep skepticism at how Oriental Daily News was able to produce the article with the above details in what seemed like an impossibly short period of time (barely 20 minutes after the attack).
Subsequently, the attack of the police officer became the top-trending topic on the popular mainland Chinese social media site Sina Weibo.
OUR TAKE
1. In analyzing the publicly available details about the attack of the Hong Kong police officer on Aug. 30, we have reason to believe that the incident could have been staged by the CCP to frame the protesters.
1.1. The police officer in question was a 45-year-old, low-rank individual who worked in the police station’s armory. Coincidentally, he also happened to be the only one knocking off work at that time of the crime.
1.2. It seems very odd for “protesters” to go after a conveniently expandable backroom police officer instead of targeting a more recognizable frontline officer in sending a message to the Hong Kong government. It is also odd for “protesters” to put themselves at huge personal risk of arrest and also risk smearing the protest movement by wearing protest colors (black) when attacking the police officer.
1.3. Oriental Daily News was able to publish a report on the attack within 20 minutes after it occurred. Barring fortuitous timing, it is a near-impossible feat to produce the report which they did in such a short timespan. First, it should take several minutes for the police to get to the crime scene and carry out preliminary investigations before the press is notified about the matter. The press would then need time to arrive on the scene (Kwai Chung is a remote part of Hong Kong) and several more minutes to figure out the basic information of the crime, including the hospital where the crime victim was taken to, and snap photos. Then the press would need to travel to the hospital to take photos and find out more information before dashing out the report. From Google Maps, it takes at least 8 minutes (not including parking time, local traffic situation, and other factors) to travel from Kwai Chung MTR station where the crime took place to Princess Margaret Hospital. Finally, it would take another handful of minutes for the piece to be edited and posted online even if the report was typed out on site instead of back at the press office.
To be able to produce the report in 20 minutes, Oriental Daily News would need to have its journalist already on-site at Kwai Chung MTR station when the crime took place and a photographer at Princess Margaret Hospital to eliminate travel time. From the two different photo credits given for the photo of the crime scene and the photo of police officers at Princess Margaret Hospital, it appears that Oriental Daily News indeed had two different staff working on the story. Still, it does not explain how they knew where to go so quickly after the crime took place.
2. We previously wrote about how the CCP is fond of using incitement tactics to create an excuse to suppress protests.
On Aug. 17, we wrote that “the CCP may not mobilize military troops in Hong Kong or send them in from Shenzhen, but will definitely send in undercover security forces or paramilitary troops to blend in with the Hong Kong police force and use heavy-handed methods to quell the protests. The CCP would likely be aiming to drive the protesters out of the streets before Oct. 1, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. The Hong Kong people must brace themselves for greater violence from the police and the triads, and even serious cases of bloodshed.”
3. In considering CCP incitement tactics, it makes sense for them to frame the protesters in a “scandal” just before large-scale protests took place over the weekend in order to fracture the protest movement and turn the Hong Kong people against each other. Judging from the protester turn out over the weekend and the general lack of ill-will towards the protesters from the citizenry, the “scandal,” if it was meant to be one, had no effect.
Going forward, the CCP could attempt more convincing schemes to frame the Hong Kong protesters.
