The One Word That Could Foretell Catastrophe in Hong Kong

Howard W. French

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One of the first things that clinched my interest in China—and this will inevitably date myself—was its fierce and utterly unique political language, the stuff of endless campaigns of denunciation and ideological warfare. Think the bloodcurdling epithets used to attack enemies during the late Mao period, like “running dog of imperialism” or “capitalist roader,” and, when that long era finally wound to a close, “gang of four.”

Language like this has almost entirely disappeared from the rhetorical lexicon of the Chinese state. But there is one important form of it that has remained on the shelf, in two words found only in China: “splittism” and “splittist.” The first is for any movement that seeks to break away from China; the second is used to label and thereby castigate any adherent of such a movement and target him or her for destruction.

For most of its existence as a peculiarly Chinese political term, “splittism” was about the threat, real or contrived, posed by people who were labeled as separatists, usually meaning members of ethnic minorities lurking somewhere along the country’s vast periphery. To designate an individual or a group of people “splittists” was almost always to announce the start of an implacable campaign of suppression against them.

Today, as the world watches nervously to see if China will use force in Hong Kong to put down the long-running popular protests against what people there see as growing encroachments on the city’s distinct legal system and way of life, observers should keep an eye out for this term. It could be the key to answering where the situation in Hong Kong is headed. Is it toward some kind of rerun of the Tiananmen tragedy of 1989? Or has China instead grown more resourceful in its approach toward political crises, of which this is perhaps the biggest since 1989? Above all, is China prepared to be more tolerant?

The roiling recent demonstrations in Hong Kong have often impressed observers by building on the best traditions of nonviolent protest, peacefully drawing as many as 2 million people out into the streets, or nearly a third of the city’s population. But on other days, smaller pockets of protesters have resorted to more direct resistance and even violence, with some young activists throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails as they faced off with police in body armor firing tear gas and rubber bullets. In fairness to the relatively small groups who have readily engaged in confrontation, Chinese state media announced early on in this crisis that Beijing regarded what it called Western traditions of peaceful civil disobedience as illegitimate.

For most of its existence as a peculiarly Chinese political term, “splittism” was about the threat, real or contrived, posed by people who were labeled as separatists.China has already used some stodgy old propaganda tactics to denounce all of this, of course. Its mouthpieces claim that the demonstrators in Hong Kong have been put up to it by hostile Western forces and denounce elements in the protest movement as “black hands” and terrorists. Escalating the rhetoric by casting the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong as “splittist” would reveal more about Beijing’s ultimate motivations. 

Unlike the people of Tibet or the Uighurs of Xinjiang, the population of Hong Kong is overwhelmingly Han Chinese, just like China’s own ethnic Han supermajority. Most people in Hong Kong are in fact not demanding independence for the city at all, but respect for its autonomy. It is true that they see their city as having its own distinct culture, which many fear for, just as much as they fear that Beijing would like to annul the political rights and freedoms promised under the “one country, two systems” pact that China signed on to when it negotiated the return of the city from British control in 1997.

More revealing still, though, is what China fears. Denouncing true separatism is easy enough. Baked into the mission of almost every modern nation state is the imperative of preserving territorial integrity. But Hong Kong presents Beijing with a far knottier challenge for an authoritarian political system that has only grown more autocratic under Xi Jinping: how to respect political and cultural differences and accord them space. 

Some of the early signs from China since the protests in Hong Kong began are not encouraging. In state media and online, there have been howling campaigns to vilify opposition leaders in Hong Kong and question their very Chineseness. There have also been calls to boycott the brands and businesses of pro-autonomy entertainers and media figures, in an effort to destroy their livelihoods and bring them to heel. A common propaganda rebuke to the protesters is to accuse them of being out of step with 1.4 billion Chinese people, which is to insist on absolute conformity among all Chinese—just what the situation in Hong Kong does not call for.

So far, one can see only two implements in China’s toolbox. The first is the use of force, which everyone—including, it seems, Beijing for the time being—dreads, not least because of the price the Chinese Communist Party would pay in terms of its international reputation. The other is a kind of technocratic approach dear to the Chinese leadership of using income and infrastructure to overcome all dissent. Beijing began hinting strongly at this approach recently with the announcement of new political leadership in Shenzhen, the wealthy and booming nearby tech hub that it is positioning to become the political and economic center of the entire region. 

I wrote about this second, technocratic strategy extensively in my 2018 book “Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power.” The hope is that by building high-speed rail connections and vast new bridges to Hong Kong, the city will become much more integrated with the surrounding Guangdong Province, and its people will become dependent on jobs and income linked to the mainland.

These are long-term approaches, though, and it is far from clear that they can scratch what really itches the people of Hong Kong: the desire to choose their own leaders, a promise in 1997 that was never fulfilled; a legal system that remains distinct and independent from China’s; and the right to untrammelled free speech and assembly. 

If Beijing’s patience runs out, it may be tempted to urge Hong Kong’s leadership to declare some kind of state of emergency. When that produces the inevitable popular backlash—of even bigger demonstrations and even more incidents of direct, even violent resistance—beware of the one word that could foretell catastrophe in Hong Kong: splittism.