A not-so-local difficulty

AT LEAST for a few moments, China’s president, Xi Jinping, might have felt like king of the world on September 4th as, one by one, the leaders of the planet’s biggest economies walked into a cavernous room in the centre of which he stood motionless, waiting for each to approach him, shake his hand and then disappear, stage left. It was the first time that China had played host to a summit of the G20 (see article). The Communist Party’s propagandists milked the occasion for every drop of patriotic feel-goodery that it could produce. Mr Xi has promised a “great revival” of the Chinese nation; presiding over such a meeting of global grandees was a perfect opportunity to show the public that he was on target.

How awkward, then, that as he was doing so voters in Hong Kong were sending Mr Xi a different—and, for the party, shocking—message. In elections for the territory’s Legislative Council, or Legco, six candidates who want Hong Kong to be more independent from China gained seats in the 70-member body (see article). Some lean towards Hong Kong’s outright separation. It is the first time since the party dismantled the Dalai Lama’s government in Tibet in 1959 that sympathisers of separatism have gained a foothold in a political institution in China. Mr Xi will see this as a threat to his nation-building.

Mercifully, it is extremely unlikely that China will resort to the tactics it has used to crush separatism in Tibet and Xinjiang in the far west, namely sending in troops and conducting mass arrests. Since China took over Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, it has allowed the territory to maintain freedoms that are forbidden on the mainland. These include the right to vote for some legislators in competitive elections (the Communist Party’s backers dominate Legco with the help of seats reserved for groups that tend to support the establishment). China tolerates Hong Kong’s distinctive politics because it promised to do so, at least until 2047. It knows that to scrap that promise would be the death knell for Hong Kong as a global financial hub.

But China’s good sense cannot be entirely counted on. Indeed, it is China’s own miscalculations that have fuelled support for politicians known as “localists”, who include outright separatists as well as people who want Hong Kong to enjoy more autonomy. The biggest mistake was a decision in 2014 not to allow the territory’s leader to be elected by the public, with anyone allowed to stand. China said it would fulfil its promise of “universal suffrage” in such polls, but retain a system for weeding out candidates it does not like. Public anger over this decision triggered the “Umbrella movement” later that year, involving weeks of demonstrations and sit-ins. Some of the localists just elected were leaders of that campaign.

Since those protests, China has kept picking away at Hong Kong’s freedoms. Voters were spooked by the detention, a few months ago, of several Hong Kong residents who had been selling gossipy books about Beijing’s leaders. One of them appears to have been spirited from Hong Kong by the mainland’s agents. And it was doubtless at the behest of leaders in Beijing that Hong Kong required candidates for Legco to forswear independence. As a result, several of the more outspoken ones were barred from standing.

Separate ways

To prevent separatism from growing in Hong Kong, Mr Xi has only one option that might actually work. That is to give the territory full democracy, not a system that is rigged in favour of the Communists’ supporters. Mr Xi may well prefer to stifle democracy even more. That would increase anger and frustration, boost separatist demands and make China’s great revival as a “harmonious” nation ever more distant.