Trump’s Audacious Vegas Diplomatic Gamble

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By Greg Rushford

January 18, 2020

Meeting in the Vietnamese seaside resort of Nha Trang yesterday, the foreign ministers of the ten ASEAN countries — the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — tentatively decided to accept President Donald Trump’s offer to host a special U.S.-ASEAN summit in the United States. The confab will be held on March 14, in Las Vegas, the Bangkok Post reported.

If all other things were equal, this would constitute a welcome piece of news. Trump has offended diplomats across the region by snubbing top Asian leaders’ summits for the last three years. The venerable Australian national security authority Carl Thayer voiced the frustrations of many when, in 2017, he likened the first Trump snub to an act of “political vandalism.” But now, Trump has signaled that the United States remains interested-and-involved in one of the world’s most dynamic regions. 

But with The Donald, nothing ever seems to be so simple. His awkward diplomatic- and political timing has raised eyebrows in key Asian capitals since Trump first floated the invitation last November. And Trump’s insistence upon the famous Nevada gambling and entertainment city as the venue has raised even more concerns. Plus, hardly for the first time with Trump, there is the distinct whiff of presidential self-dealing and cronyism in the air. 

I’ve been watching this diplomatic drama play out behind the scenes for the last two months. Here’s a quick rundown of the concerns that are being raised in well-connected Asian diplomatic and business circles.  

Awkward timing

First, the manner in which Trump offered to host a summit in the United States was perceived in the region as arrogant. He didn’t even invite the Asian chiefs of state in person, sending instead his national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, to a November 2019 summit of Asian leaders in Thailand. There, O’Brien delivered a letter with Trump’s proposal. Offended at the American president latest snub, seven of the ten ASEAN chiefs of state refused to meet with O’Brien.

Another problem with the timing was the familiar diplomatic ineptness factor that has become normal whenever Trump interacts with fellow world leaders.Top-level summits that involve coordinating the schedules of presidents and prime ministers usually take many months, perhaps a year, as the complex logistical challenges are worked out. Trump, in November 2019, was expecting the leaders of ASEAN’s ten countries to change their schedules to accommodate his, and by March 2020. In response to the raised diplomatic eyebrows, all that Trump’s aides offered, with no further explanation, was that March of 2020 best fit Trump’s schedule.

Of course it did. March 14 is just three days before the Democratic presidential primaries in the key electoral U.S. states of Ohio, Illinois, and Florida. Trump’s prospective Democratic Party challengers will then no doubt be busy fighting each other for the Democratic presidential nomination. They will project the image of mere partisan politicians jockeying for personal advantage.  

By contrast, Trump will be poised to appear presidential, a respected world leader hosting a diplomatic summit involving important Asian top leaders who have come to the United States, to pay their due respects. While he could easily do such in, say, Washington, D.C., Trump appears to have another agenda than projecting a sober image. 

An unserious venue

To be sure, Las Vegas projects anything but the image of presidential sobriety: the famous casinos, the sexy-dancer shows, the tables for high-rollers, the paparazzi with their flash bulbs, and so on. Every ASEAN summit is also well-known for the photo opportunity of the presidents and prime ministers, wearing the host country’s traditional costumes, sometimes a tad outlandish. What are the ten ASEAN leaders expected to do as they pose for posterity in Vegas: wear Elvis costumes? 

And in which luxury hotels and casinos will they choose to stay?

The whiff of presidential self-dealing

When Donald Trump is involved, world leaders can never be sure how to ascertain whether he is seeking to advance legitimate U.S. national security interests, or whether he is mainly looking to advance the Trump brand and his family’s personal financial interests. 

Speaking of branding, it happens that Las Vegas is the site of a Trump International Hotel. 

The Trump Organization’s promotional materials for the hotel boast of “our sleek, gold building” with its 1,282 “exquisitely appointed” accommodations. “This is living to the highest standard — the Trump level of luxury in a city that never disappoints.”

If some Asian leaders would risk putting their country’s sovereign wealth funds on the tables, they might end up disappointed, goes one sotto voce quip from one veteran Asia-watcher when informed of Trump’s preference for Vegas.

The 64-story Trump hotel — the tallest in Vegas, naturally — doesn’t have a casino. It does have, however, lots of Chinese tourists, who have been coming in increased numbers since Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Post has reported. And the Trump Organization has luxury condos for sale, complete with whirlpool baths, plush beds, and bars.

Such sales opportunities have sparked more sotto voce quips — to the effect that the condos could be of possible interest to Russian speakers who would know how to conceal their ownership behind shell corporations. Trump properties in Florida are crammed with such people, according to an authoritative Reuters investigative report. 

So where would the ASEAN leaders and their entourages be expected to stay? Who would occupy the “ultra luxurious” presidential suites that the Trump Organization boasts of? Where would the U.S. Secret Service and the plethora of American diplomatic and security aides stay? Where would U.S. tax dollars come into the picture? The answers to such questions have not been made public.

It’s worth recalling how Trump backed off his plans to host this year’s G-7 summit of world leaders at his National Doral golf resort in Florida, but only after a public outcry against the president’s obvious financial conflicts of interest. That was last October.

But once the president gets a notion in his mind, he is famous for not letting go easily. A month after the G-7 embarrassment, Trump quietly offered to host still another important summit in the United States. This one would have brought the corporate leaders of the top-level Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to the United States — again, this March, again in Las Vegas. That idea was quickly shot down by the offended Malaysians, who are chairing APEC this year. 

On November 7, the Straits Times newspaper in Singapore reported that Trump’s offer to host an APEC summit in Vegas “was not a good idea,” as Malaysia’s foreign minister, Saifuddin Abdullah, put it. Apparently, that was that. Since that press report, nothing has been heard of hosting any APEC summits in Vegas this year.

The cronyism factor

Nobody is considered to be closer to Donald Trump and his family than billionaire Sheldon Adelson. (The Adelsons are worth an estimated $40-plus billion, according to various published speculations).

Adelson’s importance to Trump was on public display last week, when the president held a ceremony in the White House to celebrate the recently inked “Phase One” U.S.-China trade deal. A wide array of leading American political-and business leaders were in the audience, along with Adelson and his wife Miriam. They are,Trump declared, “two very good friends” and simply “great people.”

Conspicuously, Trump praised the Sheldon and Miriam Adelson before mentioning Henry Kissinger, a covey of sitting U.S. senators, son-in-law Jared Kushner, television demagogue Lou Dobbs, and the heads of such blue-chip American corporations as Boeing, Honeywell, Mastercard, and Dow Chemical. 

Ambitious Mega Donors

Trump has good reason to like the Adelsons.They gave him perhaps $10 million in campaign cash to help him win his 2016 presidential race, plus another $5 million and chump change for the January 2017 Trump inaugural party — and then upwards of $100 million to back Republican congressional candidates in the 2018 elections. 

Sheldon Adelson is well known in Asia. His breathtaking Marina Bay Sands that illustrates Singapore’s skyline was highlighted in the movie Crazy Rich Asians. He also has casinos in Macau, which cater to Chinese tourists. 

Adelson may be 85 years old and reportedly ailing, but he is still ambitious. The gambling magnate has been working hard to obtain a casino license in Japan. Toward that end, his friend Donald Trump is thought to have pressed Adelson’s Japanese aspirations with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, according to a well-researched report by ProPublica’s Justin Elliott that was published late last year.

The ambitious octogenarian has also been hoping to open a casino in North Korea. That country is presently an impoverished wasteland, but one which Trump has also said he believes has potential high-value real estate opportunities. 

Adelson is also well-known in Asia as one of Israel’s strongest supporters. He is a fervent defender of Trump’s hardline policies towards Iran’s ayatollahs, and was thrilled when Trump moved the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. To ASEAN leaders of countries that have substantial Muslim populations, this could be the most awkward aspect of Trump’s Vegas proposals. 

Some Asia watchers contacted for this article said they found it somewhat of a stretch to imagine the prime ministers of Thailand or Malaysia, or the president of Indonesia, or the sultan of Brunei — all countries with substantial Muslim populations — rubbing shoulders with the likes of Donald Trump and Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas. And it is near impossible to imagine that, one way or the other, Adelson would not be involved in an ASEAN summit held in his city. 

And that’s where matters presently stand. The final decision on whether to attend a US-ASEAN summit in Las Vegas on March 14 will be made by the chiefs of state of the ten ASEAN countries, the January 17 article in the Bangkok Post reported. 

Who would show up, and who might not, is a matter of intense speculation.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, for one, has vowed not to travel to the United States for any reason. (At least, everyone blames congressional Democrats, not Trump, for that one. Duterte is understandably concerned over recent legislation that could deny his entourage entry visas, on human-rights grounds.)

Trump forgot another thing — nobody seems to know what the agenda for a US-ASEAN summit would be. 

Toward that end, all eyes will be on Vietnam, which is chairing ASEAN this year. Will the leadership in Hanoi seize the opportunity to work with the Americans to press the Chinese hard over Beijing’s illegal aggression in waters of the South China Sea that are rightfully within the exclusive economic zones of such ASEAN members as Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines?  

If so, there is a real opportunity for Donald Trump, despite his unfortunate diplomatic style, to shine. Trump could work to accomplish something that his predecessor in the Oval Office, Barack Obama, utterly failed to deliver. Obama stood by passively while Xi Jinping’s China weaponized the South China Sea — clearly in violation of international law. 

Stay tuned.

Republicans for Russia

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By Greg Rushford

Ronald Reagan would be astounded. Dwight Eisenhower would be mortified. John McCain would be apoplectic. And the rest of us stand simply to be perplexed, and increasingly concerned — as attitudes towards the historically predatory Russian Bear are undergoing a significant shift in influential Republican Party circles in the United States. It seems the Bear now appears, well, cuddly, to people who used to cringe at such a notion.

Gallup polling has revealed that perhaps 40 percent of Republicans now believe that “Russia is a U.S. ally or is friendly” to the United States, the Washington Post has reported. As television personality Tucker Carlson — whose foreign policy views and advice are taken seriously by President Donald Trump — said on his widely-watched Fox News show late last month, “I think we should probably take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine.” On several occasions, the president himself has expressed similar views. 

How could any American believe that Russia is even close to being friendly to the United States, or to any western democracy? Readers will have various opinions. Some will point to a certain ignorance factor: In 2014, after Russia had invaded its neighbor Ukraine, one survey found that 84 percent of the American public couldn’t find that country on a map. Others might suggest that many Americans, especially those who don’t read the nation’s quality newspapers regularly, simply don’t know which news sources to trust anymore — itself a goal of both Russian propaganda and the constant attacks on journalistic “enemies of the state” coming from the president of the United States and his supporters. 

Still others will point to deeper historical roots, notably the intellectual connection between the isolationist America Firsters of the 1930s who didn’t want to fight Hitler’s Nazis, and today’s America Firsters who are soft on Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 

Regardless, the essential facts concerning Russian conduct are crystal clear. Russia has been caught repeatedly running covert influence operations aimed at undermining liberal democracies. The Kremlin put its secret thumb on the scales of America’s 2016 presidential elections, with Donald Trump’s knowledge and approval — that’s an undeniable fact, however awkward for many of the confused Republican faithful. 

The list of Moscow’s “active measures” to undermine democracies is lengthy. Eastern European democracies, including the Czech Republic and Hungary, have been constantly targeted. So have Nato’s frontline Baltic nations — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — that share borders with Russia. The Kremlin’s spymasters have also targeted America’s western European allies including France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and also Montenegro and other Balkan nations.  

The reach of the Kremlin’s influence operations stretches beyond Europe, to remote corners of the globe. Putin and his intelligence operatives have wooed small global geopolitical players like the Philippines and even tiny Fiji (population not quite 900,000). As I’ve previously reported, Putin’s propaganda specialists at TASS have been giving Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s official Philippine News Agency “media training.” Translation: the Kremlin’s propaganda experts have been positioned to help Duterte’s spinmeisters wage information warfare against the Philippine strongman’s perceived enemies in his country’s free press. Moscow has also tried to chip away at the longstanding U.S.-Philippine security alliance by enticing Duterte — who has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Americans — into a few small-arms deals. 

For little Fiji, there have also been arms deals. Putin is also Africa’s number one arms supplier. Anywhere America isn’t paying attention, wherever there are senior politicians to be cultivated, where there might be a future pro-Russia vote in some United Nations body —Putin and his intelligence operatives are likely to show up. The point for American Republicans: To say that Russia is America’s friend, and the friend of free societies anywhere, is simply false. 

Moscow’s current influence operations have deep historical roots, dating to the Soviet Union during the 20th century and the expansionist Czars in earlier centuries. Clearly, Russia’s modern-era information warfare campaigns have not been “an anomaly,” as Keir Giles, a veteran Russia-watcher at London’s Chatham House, explained in a 2016 paper that deserves to be read again in Washington. Giles concluded that western governments should “recognize that the West’s values and strategic interests and those of Russia are fundamentally incompatible.” 

It would take a volume to sort all this out. Meanwhile, let’s take a closer look at some of current facts that should be uncontested. A series of brief snapshots helps illuminate how pro-Russian sentiments are sprouting in the same Republican Party that once cringed at the very notion.  

Snapshot

On December 3, seventy one Republican House of Representatives members voted against House Resolution 546, “disapproving” Russia’s inclusion in Group of Seven summits “until it respects the territorial integrity of its neighbors and adheres to the standards of democratic societies.” Putin has been persona non grata at the G-7 since he seized Crimea in 2014 — another foreign policy decision taken on predecessor Barack Obama’s watch that Donald Trump would love to get rid of. 

The 71 pro-Russian Republicans did not carry the day, as 116 other Republicans supported the measure to chastise the Russians. It ended up passing the House by 339 Democrats (including one independent lawmaker) to the recalcitrant 71. Still, it’s worth noting that those supporting Putin’s ambitions to rejoin the G-7 despite his aggression against Ukraine included Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee Jim Jordan, Chris Stewart, and Mike Conaway.

Snapshot

These same Intelligence Committee Republicans who are privy to some of their nation’s most sensitive secrets have been peddling Putin’s (and Trump’s) propaganda line that the Ukrainians were the ones responsible for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The Republicans have chosen to believe the Kremlin’s “fictional narrative,” rather than the unanimous view of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the office of the Director for National Intelligence, as Trump’s former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, Fiona Hill, has put it.  

None of these lawmakers with their top security clearances have expressed moral outrage over another thoroughly documented fact: that then-candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Jr., and others in the Trump presidential campaign including now-convicted campaign manager Paul Manafort and Republican trickster Roger Stone welcomed the Russian covert operation to help put Donald Trump in the White House. Instead, the Republican Intelligence Committee lawmakers have been spending their energies defending Trump from the consequences of his pressure campaign aimed at persuading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Democrat Joe Biden, one of Trump’s prospective rivals in the 2020 presidential contest. 

Snapshot

Remember the fleeting news reports when President Trump, standing by Putin’s side at a July 2018 press conference, denigrated the unanimous findings of the entire U.S. intelligence community that Putin covertly sought to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016? Trump shrugged he didn’t “see any reason why” Russia would have done that. 

Typically, as in so many other instances where the headlines screamed outrage, the president of the United States blamed the usual suspects — “dishonest” journalists — for spreading fake news. So far, the Big Lie tactics have worked in whipping up the current frenzy among Trump’s Republican base. But it is difficult to imagine that someday, dispassionate historians will be so forgiving.  

Snapshot

Trump’s Fox News friend Tucker Carlson has blamed the media for an alleged pro-Clinton bias in reporting on the Mueller Report’s solid documentation of the extensive Russian information warfare aimed at boosting Trump’s political fortunes. “It never happened, there was no collusion,” Carlson declared. “Russia didn’t hack our democracy. The whole thing was a … ludicrous talking point invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign…to explain their unexpected defeat…” 

The hard facts, as the detailed report prepared by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented, say otherwise. Putin’s intelligence operatives “carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” Mueller reported. He further established that the Republican candidate and his associates knew the Russians were helping Trump. Beyond doubt, they “expected” that Donald Trump “would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” 

Still, Mueller failed to find prosecutable proof that Trump criminally conspired with the Russians. This was the entire opening the president and his allies like Tucker Carlson have needed to falsely claim that the special counsel had completely exonerated Trump.  

The smooth-talking Carlson may not have a sure grasp of the facts relating to Russian influence operations —  but the television personality knows what his untutored American audience craves to hear. 

Snapshot

Republicans who are inclined to regard Russia as an ally of Nato democracies might change their opinions if they would read the most recent annual reports published by secret intelligence agencies in Latvia and the Czech Republic. 

Latvia’s Constitution Protection Bureau (known as the SAB) issued its most recent annual report this past April. The state security service’s findings ran to 54 pages, which were “dominated by one word: Russia,” as a Latvian Public Broadcasting report put it. Just one line sums up the litany of Moscow-directed dirty tricks: “The aggressive activities of Russian intelligence and security services pose a serious threat to the collective security of NATO and EU, and the national security of Latvia.” The Russians operations, the SAB further observed, had been “accepted at the highest political level” in Russia, the reference of course being to Vladimir Putin. 

And last month the Security Information Service in Prague (called the BIS) released a 26-page report that likewise pulled no punches regarding Moscow’s covert operations aimed at undermining the Czech Republic. The BIS revealed further details of Russian subversion, including those associated with hostile “cyber and information operations.”

The BIS also reported how the Russians had been working secretly to “cultivate an influence basis close to politicians,” aiming to build “influence networks.” 

This is the point in the story where observers of the current political climate in Washington, D.C. — where intelligence officials whose findings have embarrassed the White House have come under sustained political attack — will have a familiar feeling. Turns out that in Prague, too, not every politician is an admirer of secret intelligence agency findings involving Russia that can be politically awkward.

Milos Zeman, the president of the Czech Republic, is infamous for his unashamed, undisguised, pro-Russian inclinations. This April, Zeman blasted the latest BIS report for engaging in what he claimed was a “fictitious hunt” for Moscow-directed spies. And for the fourth time, Zeman rejected his government’s proposal to promote the respected head of BIS, Michal Koudelka, to the rank of general, reported Radio Prague International. 

Let’s end this on a positive note. This past April, Koudelka attended a private ceremony at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Czech spymaster was given the George Tenet Award, one of the highest the CIA gives to exemplary international partners. 

In Washington, some people still get it. 

Hong Kong — and the Lost Mandate of Heaven

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By Greg Rushford

Wednesday, August 15, 2019

World headlines are full of the crisis in Hong Kong. That great international port city is in the grip of civil unrest that has brought an astonishing two million people (out of a population of seven million!) into the streets. They were sparked, above all other things, by their desire to live their lives without fear of the heavy hand of repression from mainland China, a corrupt surveillance state controlled by the Communist Party. The smell of tragedy is in the air, with still-fresh memories of Beijing’s bloody Tiananmen Square massacre thirty years ago. We don’t yet know how this immediate story will play out, other than we’re all watching an historical milestone in the makings.  

What is clear is how this crisis developed. That, and the identities of the three people who are most responsible for building the frustrations that have now spilled into the streets. First and foremost: Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party and president of China since 2012. Xi has ruled like an emperor — but is clearly frightened by the notion that China should keep its promise to let Hong Kong people keep on enjoying the democratic freedoms that the Party denies to mainland Chinese subjects. 

Second is the acerbic C.Y. Leung, one of Beijing’s men in Hong Kong who served as the city’s chief executive from 2012 to 2017.  There isn’t room in this space to tell you about Leung’s full record, other than to note that he put the interests of his political masters in Beijing ahead of Hong Kong’s.

The third person most responsible for the present political instability is Carrie Lam, a politically tone-deaf bureaucrat who formerly ran the civil service for Leung, and then was tapped in 2017 by Beijing to become chief executive. Lam declined to comment for this article. She wouldn’t even say whether it bothered her that Beijing’s heavy hand has been steadily eroding the freedoms and dedication to the rule of law that have distinguished Hong Kong from all Chinese mainland cities. Of course not: from all appearances, she’s kowtowed to Bejing at every opportunity. 

I first visited Hong Kong when it was a British colony in 1969, and have flown to the city nearly every year since the Brits withdrew in 1997, when Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China. There’s naturally a lot of history of the last fifty years to be told, as Hong Kong turned into a global financial center defined by — to repeat for emphasis, because this is the most important point — qualities no mainland Chinese city has ever enjoyed. These are: a remarkable civility in public discourse, a world-class civil service, and a bastion of economic freedoms. Above all, Hong Kong until recently has stood for a respect for free speech and the rule of law that the British left behind in 1997.

But to understand the root causes of the frustrations that are now playing out in Hong Kong’s streets, just looking back at a few key events of the last five years are sufficient to explain.

In August of 2014, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing released a document that outlined how the Communist Party intended to carry out mainland China’s promise that Hong Kong people could one day elect their chief executive by universal suffrage. That had been the key deal that was enshrined in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city’s so-called mini-constitution that came with the 1997 British handover to China. Instead of universal suffrage, Hong Kong’s chief executives since the handover had been “elected” by a committee of 1,200 Hong Kongers, most of whom were marked by their loyalties to the mainland. 

From the Chinese mainland’s perspective, Hong Kong people — unlike their peers in other world-class cities like London, Paris, Tokyo and New York — were not mature enough to be trust to pick their own leaders. 

In its White Paper five years ago, the Standing Committee established its bottom line. Universal suffrage would (finally) be allowed in the 2017 election for the next chief executive, as long as there would be a guarantee that “the chief executive shall be a person who loves the country and loves Hong Kong.” The catch: The Beijing-controlled 1,200-person election committee would pick three candidates who met the approval of the Communist Party. Hong Kong people could then vote for one of them. In other words, Xi was confirming that he intended to break China’s responsibilities as contained in the Basic Law. This was a very big deal, to understate the matter. 

Immediately there was a public outcry that the mainland communists had, once again, demonstrated that they only liked “elections” where they could pick the winners. But Hong Kong’s political establishment just sort of sat back. 

Not the young people. In September, tens of thousands of outraged Hong Kong residents, lead by intrepid student leaders who emerged from seemingly nowhere, went into the streets. What had begun as peaceful Occupy Hong Kong with Love and Peace demonstrations soon morphed into what’s now mostly known as the Umbrella Movement. For several months, the young people obstructed access to government buildings, and blocked roads and disrupted traffic in key commercial districts. Such disruptive tactics, however, gradually cost them their initial widespread public support, as C. Y. Leung and Xi had calculated.

Leung’s political strategy was never based on reaching a legitimate political accommodation, but to use the Hong Kong police with their teargas and pepper spray to wear down the young people. It worked.

Xi and the mainland communists reacted the same way in late 2014 as they have in the past weeks: threats of mainland repression if the “rioters” and “terrorists” didn’t go away, coupled with a crude propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the protestors. And like they have again done this month, mainland agents then unleashed targeted violence instigated by criminal triad members with their sticks. 

When I visited Hong Kong in 2015 and spoke with both pro-Beijing politicians and some pro-democracy Hong Kong leaders, there didn’t seem to be much interest in working out an amicable settlement. Emily Lau, a respected pro-democracy member of Hong Kong’s legislature, just shrugged and said the prospect of future violence was “Beijing’s problem” to worry about. If Xi persists, Ms. Lau told me, the city would someday become “ungovernable.” While I didn’t appreciate her insights at the time, today observers are using the same word. 

Hugo Restall, the editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal Asia, had called for a political compromise in a column during the demonstrations back in September, 2014. He reasoned that the widely unpopular C.Y. Leung, who had clearly lost the public’s trust, should resign as chief executive. But mainly, Restall pointed to President Xi as the man who really could resolve the conflict: “Mr. Xi’s hardline stance on Hong Kong’s political system created this standoff.” 

Noting that Xi was fond of quoting Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, Restall framed his challenge to the Communist Party leader in classic Confucian style. A central component of Confucian politics holds that whenever emperors break their faith with the Chinese people, they lose the necessary “mandate of heaven” to continue to govern legitimately. 

Xi’s breaking his faith with Hong Kong, Restall reasoned, had cost him that mandate. But now, “if the emperor is honest with his people, there’s a chance he can regain the mandate of heaven,” Restall concluded. (Full disclosure: Restall was then my editor at the Wall Street Journal Asia, which I have occasionally contributed to since 1995. He remains a trusted friend.)

But Emperor Xi and his minions scoffed at the notion they might wisely reflect upon honored Confucian traditions to best serve the Chinese people. Instead, they gradually tightened the screws on dissent in Hong Kong.

Democracy activists from the 2014 Umbrella Movement like teenager Joshua Wong have been in-and-out of jail ever since, on charges ranging from obstruction of justice to contempt. The energetic Wong is now all of 22 years old. His real “crime” has been his passion for democracy, that and his natural talent for leadership. Beijing’s hidden hand has been the driving force behind the repression.

Perhaps you’ve read in the South China Morning Post about the five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing in 2015, and “eventually turned up in the custody of mainland China authorities.” Or of the various pro-democracy politicians who were duly elected to Hong Kong’s legislative council, only to be disqualified because of their (peaceable) political views that Beijing feared. C.Y. Leung and Carrie Lam’s roles during this unfortunate series of events: mostly keeping their mouths shut while allowing the dirty work to be done behind the scenes.

Or you might recall news accounts from a year ago this month concerning Victor Mallet, the veteran Hong Kong-based correspondent for the Financial Times. Mallet lost his working visa last year for taking Hong Kong’s traditional respect for free speech a tad too seriously. Mallet, who was vice-chairman of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, invited a Hong Kong dissident who was daring to call for independence from China — an extreme stance that the vast majority of Hong people have never supported — to explain his reasoning at an FCC lunch. Predictably, mainland authorities went ballistic. 

Talk about a fine opportunity for Hong Kong leaders to remind Beijing that Hong Kong’s reputation as one of the world’s leading financial centers is based on honoring the free flow of speech and information. Instead, Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her subordinates took the unprecedented step of kicking the Financial Times journalist out of Hong Kong. 

It was a simple case of repression-by-bureaucracy. Mallet’s working visa was not routinely renewed. (Dictatorships like Vietnam play such nasty games to keep journalists in line, not Hong Kong until these days.) Mallet also was subjected to various indignities, including a four-hour interrogation by Hong Kong authorities. He has not been allowed to return, even as a visitor. This was Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s work. She has grudgingly acknowledged the ultimate decision was hers, but has never fully been truthful about that sad episode.

There’s a lot more that could be said, but that’s the essence. This year, the tone-deaf Lam worked overtime to press legislation that would allow Hong Kong authorities to extradite anyone to mainland China, where they would be subjected to China’s corrupt judiciary. That was simply going too far — especially when Lam was accused of playing sneaky games to bypass established procedures to get the legislation through Hong Kong’s legislature. 

So Hong Kong people were once again left with no alternative but to go into the streets. Faced with such a fierce public outcry, Lam finally apologized, and backed off, sort of — but has refused to withdraw the offending legislation permanently. Like Leung before her, she has relied upon Hong Kong’s riot police, instead of looking for a peaceful political negotiated outcome to end the unrest. 

That’s the best I can now offer, by way of trying to explain how the crisis that threatens Hong Kong’s cherished way of life has been building up for years. As always, it’s impossible to predict with certainty what will unfold in the coming days, weeks, and perhaps months. All we know is that another important historical milestone is being shaped in one of the world’s most wonderful cities. Stay tuned.