Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on telegram
Share on whatsapp
Share on linkedin
Share on print
Share on email

Trump’s Monumental Decision on Hong Kong

◎ The course of action Trump chooses will have broad implications for the future of U.S.-China relations, and for the security and confidence of Taiwan.


By Joseph Bosco

President Donald Trump’s latest declaration on the Hong Kong protests seeks to reconcile his earlier conflicting statements. In June, he said Hong Kong, as part of China, is an internal matter for those parties to resolve.

In August, he recognized that Hong Kong is also an international human rights concern and called on Xi Jinping to “do the right thing.” He said Beijing’s handling of it would affect progress on the trade talks if China “works humanely with Hong Kong first.”

Last week, both houses of Congress — the Senate unanimously and the House with all but one vote — approved the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which would impose sanctions against officials who violate human rights in Hong Kong and could remove the territory’s special trade and financial status.

Predictably, Beijing strongly condemned Washington’s latest “interference in China’s internal affairs” and encouragement of political turmoil. But, since Chinese spokespersons have been alleging an American “black hand” virtually from the outset of the protests, the heavy-handed tactics finally have provoked a serious Western response. Congress might well have reasoned that if the United States will be accused of intervening anyway, we might as well do some good in the meantime.

On Friday, the president was asked whether he would sign or veto the legislation. His answer reflected the competing considerations he suggested he is weighing: human rights and support for democracy versus the need to negotiate an acceptable trade agreement with China.

“We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi. He’s a friend of mine. He’s an incredible guy but I’d like to see them work it out. But I have to stand with Hong Kong. I stand with freedom … but we are also in the process of making the largest trade deal in history.”

It suggested a possible reversal of his earlier position that the Hong Kong outcome took priority over a trade deal. Now, he was cautioning that the U.S. position on Hong Kong should not be allowed to interfere with a good trade outcome.

But Trump hinted at a slightly different line of reasoning when he took credit for the Chinese government’s restraint so far in avoiding a Tiananmen-like massacre: “The only reason he’s not going in is because I’m saying it’s going to affect our trade deal.”

In the president’s mind, and possibly Xi’s, China might be seen as already having done its part on Hong Kong to facilitate the trade talks. Now, that argument might go, Washington must be prudent by not exacerbating the situation, which the Hong Kong Act could do by encouraging the protesters to persevere.

Yet, the absence of machine-gun fire and tanks in the streets is a very low hurdle to pass in judging official restraint. Police beatings with batons and metal rods, stomping downed protestors’ heads, shootings with beanbags and rubber bullets, spraying with toxic gases, and choke-holds, manhandling and bundling young people into police vans hardly qualify as “humane” treatment. The number of students loaded into trains and vans and incarcerated in unknown locations is now in the thousands, approaching the death and casualty figures for June 4, 1989. There have been reports of torture and “suicides.”

The fact that Chinese Communist brutality has not been even worse and more public hardly constitutes “doing the right thing” as Trump requested of Xi. Concessions to the student demands for release of detainees, police accountability, and guarantee of universal suffrage would have calmed the situation and would have been consistent with Beijing’s original “one country, two systems” promise. Xi’s failure to ensure that result provides more than enough reason to justify Trump signing the Hong Kong Act.

If China were to respond by indeed unleashing its army against Hong Kong, Trump should make clear that would immediately trigger the punitive actions provided in the act and would trigger severe international repercussions against China across the board. Along with the concentration camps in East Turkestan/Xinjiang, it would make Communist China the pariah regime it should have been after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Far from weakening the U.S. position in the trade talks, where China needs a deal more than the United States, it would demonstrate an indomitable American will that Beijing has not previously encountered and which it must now accept in all its dealings.

The president has several options vis-à-vis the legislation, ranging from pro-Hong Kong to pro- Beijing actions. Trump could:

  1. sign it into law with a strong statement affirming its democratic purposes and pledging vigorous implementation in support of Hong Kong;
  2. sign with no statement;
  3. sign with a wink-and-nod conciliatory statement to Beijing while admonishing the protestors to refrain from violence or provocation;
  4. do nothing and let the bill become law in 10 days;
  5. do nothing and let it die if Congress adjourns within the 10 day period (pocket veto);
  6. veto with no statement, allowing bipartisan Congressional majorities to pass it over his veto;
  7. veto with a statement calling for protestors’ restraint and expressing appreciation to Xi for cooperation in Hong Kong, in the trade talks, and possibly on North Korea — and convince enough Republicans to switch their votes and uphold his veto.

The course of action Trump chooses will have broad implications for the future of U.S.-China relations, and for the security and confidence of Taiwan, which Beijing also claims as part of China under the one country, two systems formula.

For Xi and China, it is an existential political moment, equal to the economic challenge Trump has created with his demand for internal structural reform and trade reciprocity. If the president does not shrink from pressing America’s and the West’s advantage in both confrontations, China will finally be on the way to true integration into Richard Nixon’s “family of nations” and Trump will find himself presiding over a historic moment every bit as monumental and positive for the world as Ronald Reagan’s success in ending the Cold War.

If President Trump joins with a virtually unanimous Congress in standing with Hong Kong, it will send a powerful message to America’s adversaries that domestic political rancor will not tie America’s hands in the global struggle between freedom and tyranny.

First published in The Hill.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the Secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and the Institute for Taiwan-American Studies, and has held nonresident appointments in the Asia-Pacific program at the Atlantic Council and the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of SinoInsider. 

Search past entries by date
“The breadth of SinoInsider’s insights—from economics through the military to governance, all underpinned by unparalleled reporting on the people in charge—is stunning. In my over fifty years of in-depth reading on the PRC, unclassified and classified, SinoInsider is in a class all by itself.”
James Newman, Former U.S. Navy cryptologist
“Unique insights are available frequently from the reports of Sinoinsider.”
Michael Pillsbury, Senior Fellow for China Strategy, The Heritage Foundation
“Thank you for your information and analysis. Very useful.”
Prof. Ravni Thakur, University of Delhi, India
“SinoInsider’s research has helped me with investing in or getting out of Chinese companies.”
Charles Nelson, Managing Director, Murdock Capital Partners
“I value SinoInsider because of its always brilliant articles touching on, to name just a few, CCP history, current trends, and factional politics. Its concise and incisive analysis — absent the cliches that dominate China policy discussions in DC and U.S. corporate boardrooms — also represents a major contribution to the history of our era by clearly defining the threat the CCP poses to American peace and prosperity and global stability. I am grateful to SinoInsider — long may it thrive!”
Lee Smith, Author and journalist
“Your publication insights tremendously help us complete our regular analysis on in-depth issues of major importance. ”
Ms. Nicoleta Buracinschi, Embassy of Romania to the People’s Republic of China
"I’m a very happy, satisfied subscriber to your service and all the deep information it provides to increase our understanding. SinoInsider is profoundly helping to alter the public landscape when it comes to the PRC."
James Newman, Former U.S. Navy cryptologist
“Prof. Ming’s information about the Sino-U.S. trade war is invaluable for us in Taiwan’s technology industry. Our company basically acted on Prof. Ming’s predictions and enlarged our scale and enriched our product lines. That allowed us to deal capably with larger orders from China in 2019. ”
Mr. Chiu, Realtek R&D Center
“I am following China’s growing involvement in the Middle East, seeking to gain a better understanding of China itself and the impact of domestic constraints on its foreign policy. I have found SinoInsider quite helpful in expanding my knowledge and enriching my understanding of the issues at stake.”
Ehud Yaari, Lafer International Fellow, The Washington Institute
“SinoInsider’s research on the CCP examines every detail in great depth and is a very valuable reference. Foreign researchers will find SinoInsider’s research helpful in understanding what is really going on with the CCP and China. ”
Baterdene, Researcher, The National Institute for Security Studies (Mongolian)
“The forecasts of Prof. Chu-cheng Ming and the SinoInsider team are an invaluable resource in guiding our news reporting direction and anticipating the next moves of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.”
Chan Miu-ling, Radio Television Hong Kong China Team Deputy Leader
“SinoInsider always publishes interesting and provocative work on Chinese elite politics. It is very worthwhile to follow the work of SinoInsider to get their take on factional struggles in particular.”
Lee Jones, Reader in International Politics, Queen Mary University of London
“[SinoInsider has] been very useful in my class on American foreign policy because it contradicts the widely accepted argument that the U.S. should work cooperatively with China. And the whole point of the course is to expose students to conflicting approaches to contemporary major problems.”
Roy Licklider, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Columbia University
“As a China-based journalist, SinoInsider is to me a very reliable source of information to understand deeply how the CCP works and learn more about the factional struggle and challenges that Xi Jinping may face. ”
Sebastien Ricci, AFP correspondent for China & Mongolia
“SinoInsider offers an interesting perspective on the Sino-U.S. trade war and North Korea. Their predictions are often accurate, which is definitely very helpful.”
Sebastien Ricci, AFP correspondent for China & Mongolia
“I have found SinoInsider to provide much greater depth and breadth of coverage with regard to developments in China. The subtlety of the descriptions of China's policy/political processes is absent from traditional media channels.”
John Lipsky, Peter G. Peterson Distinguished Scholar, Kissinger Center for Global Affairs
“My teaching at Cambridge and policy analysis for the UK audience have been informed by insights from your analyzes. ”
Dr Kun-Chin Lin, University Lecturer in Politics,
Deputy Director of the Centre for Geopolitics, Cambridge University
" SinoInsider's in-depth and nuanced analysis of Party dynamics is an excellent template to train future Sinologists with a clear understanding that what happens in the Party matters."
Stephen Nagy, Senior Associate Professor, International Christian University
“ I find Sinoinsider particularly helpful in instructing students about the complexities of Chinese politics and what elite competition means for the future of the US-China relationship.”
Howard Sanborn, Professor, Virginia Military Institute
“SinoInsider has been one of my most useful (and enjoyable) resources”
James Newman, Former U.S. Navy cryptologist
“Professor Ming and his team’s analyses of current affairs are very far-sighted and directionally accurate. In the present media environment where it is harder to distinguish between real and fake information, SinoInsider’s professional perspectives are much needed to make sense of a perilous and unpredictable world. ”
Liu Cheng-chuan, Professor Emeritus, National Chiayi University
Previous
Next