Transcripts For CSPAN2 Mark Clifford Today Hong Kong Tomorro

Welcome everyone to the opcs book night with Mark Clifford to discuss his new book today hong kong tomorrow the world. What chinas crackdown reveals about its plans to end freedom everywhere. Im Patricia Kranz the executive director of the overseas press club. Im delighted to welcome mark tonight and our moderator jody schneider. Jody was based in bloombergs Hong Kong Bureau from 2016 to 2020 and served as president of the Foreign Correspondence Club in hong kong in 2019 and 2020. As soon as jody returned from hong kong to new york last year. She joined the opc and was elected to the board in the summertime. She is now political news director at Bloomberg News here in new york. I now handed over to jody. Thanks patty and i happy to welcome everybody to this book night. I only wish it were in person, but im very pleased to introduce Mark Clifford who i overlapped with in hong kong and im pleased to call a friend and very excited to discuss this new book with them. We welcome questions, so, please send them along. Please send them in the chat if you want to if you dont want me to use your name say that or if you want to keep it just dm me in the chat. So its so your names not attached you can do that as well. Thank you. First a brief bio of mark little introduction before we get started discussing his thoughtprovoking book. Mark is now living in the us and as president of the committee for freedom in hong kong he in hong kong. He most recently was executive director of the Asia Business council and a former member of next digital the company that published apple daily a subject he discuss extensively in this book in which we will talk about tonight. Mark is editorial chair of the asia asian review books and had the distinction. I dont know if he was the only one perhaps of serving as editorinchief of both english language daily paper or papers in hong kong the standard and the south China Morning post. He also has a phd in hong kong history from the university of hong kong. As petty noted, i was president of the forum Correspondence Club in hong kong in 2019 and 2020. So i had a front row seat when the widespread antigovernment protests occurred in hong kong and also as the crackdown started in 2020 very swiftly with the imposition by the Chinese Communist party of the National Security law upon hong kong. Id like to start there mark by talking to you about that crackdown a central to the theme in your book in the book. You say that never in modern history. Have we seen a free open modern society essentially destroyed in a matter of months a chapter in your book is even called the first post modern city to die. Please tell us about that and how that happened. And how is she saying that chapter much of what happened occurred because the idea the city exemplifying capitalism on steroids being reunited by a country run by the communist. He was always somewhat preposterous. So can you talk to us about first of you know, how rapidly this occurred and im what it was based. Yeah. Well, thanks jody really nice to be doing this discussion with you. Hope to see you in person sooner rather than later. Um last time i saw it was in hong kong, i guess probably around the time the nsl National Security law came into into being. Um, look, i think you know most of you watching this know that hong kong was promised 50 years with a high degree of autonomy after the chinese resumed sovereignty in 1997. It was you know, i think we all wanted to not just hope for the best but work for the best and take china at its word that the promise is of universal suffrage among other things would be implemented that this high degree of autonomy would be would would be you too by the chinese and of course it was these were promises that were made in first in an International Treaty the sinobritish joint declaration of 1984 a treaty filed at the United Nations and then in the form of the basic law the many constitution that china promulgated a few years before the handover, but i think chinas, you know, china really just did not does not understand. What makes hong kong tick what makes it special and i think they were quite fine to promise free elections and bear in mind. These are elections for the mayor in the city council. Were not talking about an independent in hong kong. It was really china that put that idea in peoples heads because it was so um, so overbearing but i dont i want to keep the floor back to you a little bit jodi, but i think that after 20 something years after the struggles first of the 2003 protests of a half a Million People are so against the national. I kind of earlier version of the National Security law. Then the Umbrella Movement the occupy Central Movement of 2014 when the Central District was occupied for 79 days by protesters and then of course the the summer of 2019 that summer of democracy the frustration among hong kong people as beijing tighten the screws more and more and became clear that beijing had no intention whatsoever a lot of allowing free elections, unless china knew who was going to win and it was their guy. So, let me let me kick it over you because i dont want it to be a monologue jody. Sure. Well, and so lets talk a little bit about that and the protest which we will be at what you do a lot in your book and i think most people are familiar with how in 2019 it started out as protests in a protest city by the way hong kong, you know likes to protest and theyre good at it, but it started against the extradition law that carrie lam was going to impose so that basically people could be extradited back to china with its okay legal system and it but then it grew into Something Else and there were you know at one point perhaps as many as two Million People protesting that and then it became fewer people but more more some what radical sometimes violent on both sides the Police Increasingly using tear gas and rubber bullets and sometimes even shooting some live bullets and and very antichina on the of the protesters and increasingly in the community where its spilled over people would boycott chinese zone mainland owned businesses that kind of thing. How much do you think of this crackdown . Which came, you know, just a year after during the pandemic by the way under the cover of the pandemic. How much is do you think the pro to be happened . Because the protest became very embarrassing to china and especially to xi jinping as the rhetoric became increasingly antichina. Yeah, well, i think its a really good question, and i guess itll be really interesting if someday in a different china we can have access to the archives and the decisionmaking, but it was very clear by the end of 2019 that china was the beijing was going to move and move hard and i think thats unfortunate because even after the the extraordinary protests as you say as many as two Million People at some at some rallies in a city of seven and a half Million People and and these were not people coming in from mainland china. I mean, these were really pretty much all hong kongers it would be yeah, it would be the equivalent if you took it proportionally in the us something around 80 Million People coming to washington. I mean, its just extraordinary how the city was caught up in this and i think that china was counting on this kind of silent majority. Its what they call the blue wave, um to to back them and back the probe aging in District Council elections held end of november 2019. So after these months of tumult and as you say increasing violence on both sides the election day came and it turned out that as in every election in hong kong about six out of 10 people voted for the prodemocracy candidates, and it was a unbelievable sweep for the prodemocracy camp and these were for the District Council essentially ward counselors the lowest level but it really showed Community Support for democracy even after the violence, which i like many other people. I thought would turn a lot of people against the the protesters so i think you know rather than using that as a kind of pause or a reset and it had the political situation in calm down and a chance for negotiations, i think in any open Society Government would fall or we negotiate and you know, even in places like south korea and 1987, very authoritarian place faced with massive street protests. The government gave into protesters negotiated with them but beijing couldnt do this and so xi jinpings response was to send down two really hard line tough people one to basically take charge on the ground in hong kong and one of them was best known for breaking up Christian Churches literally physically smashing churches and judging you send people like that in and you get you get one kind of answer. Its a hard line answer and i i jumping forward a little bit. Ill just finish by saying i dont think weve seen the bottom yet. The new Peoples Liberation Army Commander for hong kong previously ran an elite and seemingly very violent Commando Unit in xinjiang hunting down and apparently killing. Um, you know people they regardless as muslim terrorists are separatists. So yeah, you sent people like that to hong kong again. It was a free peaceful prosperous city, but you send people are hardline 30 people from the ccp the Chinese Communist party and youre going to get a particular outcome. In the book you talk a great deal about the notion of hong kong. Is this very free open capitalist city a place where basically people flock to make money, and anybody who spent time in hong kong, you know sees that theres other side but theres the gleaming, you know, the huge Office Towers and and its you know until recently very easy to get a visa to get a work visa very easy to travel in an Auto Hong Kong it, you know low tax, you know, very business friendly and the thinking in the years before the protests and certainly the crackdown was that even she didnt paying the sheeping and the ccp of today didnt want to give up the so called goose that laid the golden egg and that by cracking down on freedoms. They could be risking seriously harming or even destroying a key Asian Financial center than needed those very freedoms and especially the sense of the you know, the british contract law to survive change there and you know what allowed that risk in killing the goose that laid the golden egg to occur and and ive wondered myself lately whether it was inevitable. Yeah, well, i cant answer whether or not its inevitable. I think theres a lot of contingency in history, but i think a couple of factors is great question one is from a macroeconomic standpoint. I think hong kong matters a lot less than it did in 1997. I mean china is what i think its an 18 trillion dollar economy. Obviously second only to the us much larger than japan and yeah the flows that come through hong kong are important. I think much of the you know, Technology Human know how thats come through hong kong is important, but you know in a relative sense, its much much less important than it was in 1997, but i think the more important answer is it shows that for the party, you know staying in power is and what they regard as security is more important than anything else and we saw that in 1989 when they killed hundreds maybe even thousands of their own people of you know, Young Students that you know, really many of them that the cream of a new generation and china and they you know murdered them in the street and i think in hong kong, i mean theyve been theyve done it much more skillfully there have been very very few deaths and none directly that can be linked to to Security Forces killing anybody. Um, but the result has been pretty much the same and i think the party, you know when it comes to, you know economics or hong kong as a business center, you know that secondary to the party staying in power and by the way, theyve been very clear about this when dong chow ping met Margaret Thatcher in 1982 first time the british prime a british Prime Minister had ever gone to to beijing a serving Prime Minister and dung told her that chinese were definitely taking hong kong back in 1997 that was idea of continued British Administration was was a nogo and she said you dont understand hong kong and you cant run it. He said yeah, we think we can run it and if we cant and we wreck it so be it were taking it and so i think theyve very very clear that politics will trump economics if push comes to shove in hong kong. They hope they could have it both ways. They did for a while maybe as you save as inevitable that it wasnt going to last but politics was always going to win. Right, and id like how in the book you would you say that you address this line that so many of us heard, you know living there all the time that hong kong was becoming just another mainland city and you say thats the wrong frame for that question. Why is that the case . Why is this crackdown at hong kong more concerning than just to the 7. 5 Million People those fewer every day live there. Why . Why is it not just becoming another . Yeah, thats it. I think theyre too if i can answer that in two parts. The first thing is you would rather be in beijing or shanghai right now because you know what the rules are, you know, the red lines, you know, things are pretty clear in hong kong though the lines as to whats gonna literally get you thrown in jail with no prospect of bail or unclear from day to day. I mean, we had a we had a protester thrown in jail a week or so ago because he was thinking or planning a onehand protest against the olympics. Um, you know, weve had a speech therapist whos been didnt in jail for the better part of a year because she was involved with the Childrens Book that had wolf and wolves and sheep and i guess that was somehow against National Security or sedition or something, but shes in jail and National Security law charges, so nobody really knows what the rules are in hong kong. So i think its its worse than it then almost any mainland city with the exception of cities in xinjiang in tibet, and i think we have to think of hong kong. I think beijing views hong kong through a frame of peripheral region full of troublemakers and think about it. Whats on the peripheration john tibet hong kong theyre far away and they caused a lot of trouble for for china and so rather than trying to modify them or work with people. I mean the the things seems to be kind of strike hard and and you know, just keep walking until theres nothing left. Um now the broader question, i think what is this matter to the rest of the world . I think china is willingness. Destroy a place like hong kong that you know, honestly, what was that . What threat did hong kong pose to china . I mean, what did hong kong do say what military threat yeah, or what threat was was hong kong really seriously going to become independent were were i mean chunks and men are famously said he, you know, they were worried after 1989 that the hong kong spirit of liberty and freedom would spill over to the mainland. I mean that clearly wasnt happening. But yeah every time theres any kind of demonstration the guys in beijing seem to see Color Revolution and yeah, they were obviously seared by the collapse of the soviet union arab spring some of the things that have happened in central asia, and so they just have to whack down any kind of any kind of uprising but i think the bigger point is what what china did in in hong kong is the kind of thing its trying to do in lithuania today. Its through trying to do with australia that its done with south korea with the philippines. I mean country after country that step. Of line as far as china is concerned and of course, you know we can talk about taiwan is going to be whacked and hit hard in the chinese are you know seemingly picking quarrels to use their language with with a variety of places and just i think using a degree of coercion in trying to trying to limit the ability of those of us in the in the free world or open societies to to be able to just have discussions like this if china had their way we wouldnt be having this discussion as a matter of fact, you know, technically they could probably you know, they they say the National Security law applies everywhere and if they wanted to jodie they could come after you and me according to their way of thinking. Good. Well, were getting some questions in and and theyre dealing with the second part. Ill show the books people havent seen it. The second part is today hong kong tomorrow the world and we have bill hosting whos asking. What did the peoples republic of china learn in question hong kong that they intend to apply to the world. So hes getting to the second part of the year the title of your book. Well, i think i think henry, you know unremitting pressure, but thanks bill. So a really good question. But again, i think were seeing this playbook. Lets say lithuania. Um, they use they try to coopt certain parts of also africa, im sorry. I didnt mention that before they will coopt certain parts of the elite