COLUMNS

In Hong Kong, Beijing Will Choose Chinese Sovereignty

undefined and Director, Stratfor Center for Applied Geopolitics at RANE
Rodger Baker
Director, Stratfor Center for Applied Geopolitics at RANE, Stratfor

Oct 10, 2019 | 09:00 GMT

This photo shows riot police in Hong Kong standing guard outside a police station on Oct. 7, 2019.

Hong Kong riot police stand guard outside a police station on Oct. 7. Protesters in Hong Kong have issued five major demands. Their demand for universal suffrage is, at its core, a call for self-determination and is one that Beijing will not tolerate.

(VERNON YUEN/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Highlights

  • The Hong Kong protests reveal an unbridgeable gap over the future of the city.
  • Hong Kong remains important to Beijing for political and economic reasons, but national unity will ultimately trump the other two.
  • However the current political crisis ends, businesses and governments will be forced to revisit their long-term plans in Hong Kong.

Whatever the outcome of the current protests, Hong Kong will not return to "normal." No political compromise will satisfy both sides. At its core, the protest movement in Hong Kong is about self-determination: the right of Hong Kong to choose its own laws and leadership -- and thus its own path. This view is anathema to Beijing's core interest in national unity and eventual complete unification. Hong Kong's unique status will either continue to erode, removing once and for all the fiction of "one country, two systems," or Hong Kong will break politically from the mainland, fracturing China's 70-year drive to reconstitute the nation. The odds are stacked against that second outcome....

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