SINOWEEKLYPLUS

Political compromise and crisis on display as the PRC marks 70th anniversary; HKMAO’s Zhang Xiaoming ‘misses’ another public event

SinoInsight 1
On Sept. 28, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the Central United Front Work Department, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, the Taiwan Affairs Office, and the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese held a dinner reception to mark the PRC’s 70th anniversary at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Song Zhe, the deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, had attended the Sept. 28 reception, according to footage from state broadcaster CCTV’s “Xinwen Lianbo” report of the event. Song’s boss Zhang Xiaoming, however, did not appear on the “Xinwen Lianbo” broadcast.

OUR TAKE
1. It is very irregular for CCTV’s “Xinwen Lianbo” to not show footage of Zhang Xiaoming the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office head at an event that was jointly hosted by the Office. And unless Zhang had taken ill or had to attend to some emergency, he has no good reason to miss a PRC 70th anniversary reception.

Zhang’s absence at the Sept. 28 reception follows another irregular absence of his from a high-level reception in Beijing on Sept. 11 to congratulate incoming Macau leader Ho Iat Seng and present him with a leadership decree.

Zhang’s recent non-attendance of key public events bode ill for him. We believe that he faces very high levels of political risk and could even be placed under investigation.

2. Zhang’s non-attendance of public events could be part of a CCP strategy for pacifying Hong Kong.

The situation in Hong Kong has grown very tense since a teenage protester was shot in the chest by a police officer on Oct. 1 and after the Hong Kong government enacted an emergency law to ban face masks on Oct. 4. We believe that the tense situation is the result of both classic CCP suppression operations and the Xi-Jiang factional struggle.

The CCP needs to quell the Hong Kong protests because the city is a very important financial hub for the mainland and the international community. However, the CCP’s hardline measures have failed to make the Hong Kong people yield and appear to have instead made them more angry and united.

The CCP cannot let the Hong Kong situation go unresolved for several more months, especially not when it has greater priorities in the Sino-U.S. trade negotiations and the 2020 Taiwan presidential election. As hardline measures become less and less effective, the CCP will likely find scapegoats to blame and make concessions (more precisely, what it believes are concessions; the Hong Kong people might not take what the CCP has to offer as concessions) to pacify Hong Kong. In this scenario, the leadership of the Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office could take the fall for the CCP; Zhang Xiaoming’s non-attendance of public events could foreshadow his being sacrificed to preserve the CCP’s interests.

3. We do not believe that Zhang Xiaoming will be the only CCP official to be purged over Hong Kong. More senior cadres, including former high-ranking officials who oversaw Hong Kong and Macau affairs, could also be sacrificed. However, we believe that it is unlikely that the purge of CCP officials will do much to pacify the Hong Kong people.

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