China shows its might – and reminds Hong Kong of all it has to lose

Editorial: The country remains a complex society that western and indeed Chinese scholars can spend lifetimes trying to understand, but the one obvious abiding principle and national objective of the ruling class can be summed up in one word – unity

The 70th anniversary of the Republic's foundation is a good moment for the demonstrators to try to envisage the mindset of President Xi and his government (EPA)

The 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China was marked in Beijing by a remarkable show of martial strength. Although hardly required, the 100,000 soldiers and performers, 160 aircraft overhead, the 600 tanks (four times as many as the UK has in total) and hypersonic nuclear missiles capable of reaching America were a reminder both of China’s status in the world, and how far it has travelled since Mao reunified a defeated, ruined, colonised and fractured nation.

The purpose was to amplify the message transmitted to the whole world by President Xi: “There is no force that can shape the foundation of this great nation, and no force that can stop the Chinese people and the Chinese nation from getting ahead.” Indeed not, ranking as it does as the world’s largest economy (allowing for the vagaries of exchange rate distortions, it is larger than the European Union’s or America’s).

The Chinese Communist Party’s victory in 1949 ended a century of western and Japanese interference and occupation, from the Opium Wars of the 1850s to the massacre of Nanjing in 1937, during which Imperial Japanese forces murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians.

As the awesome display of high-tech weaponry was trundling past the Chinese Politburo in their capital city, some 2,000km to the south a single bullet was lodged in the chest of a protester in the Hong Kong special administrative region, a leftover of China’s past exploitation by the British. It was the first time a live round had been fired in the current unrest – and thus a far more significant piece of munitions than the billions of dollars’ worth on show in the national parade. Where previously the authorities had been content to deal with the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong with less lethal rubber bullets, water cannons, teargas and baton charges, this was something of a turning point – and a clear danger signal, calculated or not on how the protesters are drifting into extremely hazardous territory.

Conditioned by the lingering global outrage over the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, and with an international treaty still partly covering the governance of Hong Kong, the Chinese leadership has been cautious, if not sometimes bewildered by the strength of the reaction in Hong Kong at an earlier attempt to erode the territory’s independent judiciary and legal system. Since then, the local governors have suspended and then withdrawn the proposal to allow “extradition” of individuals to the “mainland”, just as the protesters demanded.

However, the demonstrations have persisted, and caused huge disruption to the airport and commercial life in Hong Kong. The 70th anniversary is a good moment for the demonstrators to try to envisage the mindset of President Xi and his government, and how they view China – with a jumpy nervousness. Partly as a result of the tragic history alluded to by the president in his speech, they believe the paramount duty of the Communist Party is to prevent any secessionist tendencies and to maintain the unity of the state, both territorially and socially. They also look to the example of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of its component states as an example of how not to proceed with economic and political reform. Since the time of Deng Xiaoping, the state has followed the path of economic liberalisation, inviting foreign trade and investment but under the guidance of the party. In tandem with that has been still rigid political control over the affairs of the nation. It is something the leadership cannot and will not surrender. It is also something the protesters in Hong Kong are nowhere near strong enough to defeat.

In a vast nation of 1.4 billion, with countless different cultures and languages, maintaining as much cohesion as has been achieved in the past 70 years has been both impressive and, at times, shameful. The illegal occupation of Tibet, for example, the present persecution of millions of Uighur Muslims, and the refusal to allow autonomy for Taiwan ranks with the Tiananmen massacre, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward and the more recent degradation of the environment as the great failures of the Chinese state.

The economic, social and industrial progress during the modernisation era that began in the 1980s, though, has lifted more people out of poverty in a shorter time than at any other point in human history anywhere on the planet. China remains a complex society that western and indeed Chinese scholars can spend lifetimes trying to understand, but the one obvious abiding principle and national objective of the ruling class can be summed up in one word – unity. There was a reason why the Chinese flag was raised at a special ceremony in Hong Kong, where not so long ago the old colonial-era flag, compete with Union Jack, had been raised in a provocation by the more militant protesters, some of whom now talk about independence from the Peoples’ Republic. That will not be countenanced by the leadership: it is a fact of political life the protesters in Hong Kong have to take account of as they pursue entirely justified peaceful and legal protests.