Tiananmen, naval tensions and our new era

Police in Hong Kong arrested people accused of being pro-democracy demonstrators and activists this week during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The crackdown on dissent has grown in recent years and this is particularly true in Hong Kong, where Beijing used the pandemic as an excuse to exert greater control.

The crushing of any criticism of the government is part of China’s shifting stance on many issues and it has become more aggressive in its rhetoric and behavior. The pandemic provided a perfect opportunity for the regime to retreat behind its walls, and begin a process of confrontation and distancing from the West. China seeks to increase its influence among authoritarian regimes and the global south, while inching closer to more confrontations with not only the US and the West, but with western democratic partners and allies in Asia, such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India.

What worries Beijing the most? A 67-year-old woman was detained in Hong Kong and the BBC noted that “she was arrested while carrying flowers near Victoria Park, where vigils have been held for decades.” People can’t hold flowers or have a silent vigil.

Authoritarian regimes gaining confidence

Despite the recent election in Turkey, journalists and dissidents have been forced to flee the country or have been imprisoned and opposition politicians have been rounded up and accused of being “terrorists.”

In Russia a poem can lead to incarceration, even a child’s drawing. Because authoritarian regimes now have access to the most powerful tools of social media and big tech censorship, they can crush almost every aspect of dissent. They haven’t yet reached the point of regulating how people think as in a truly Orwellian universe, but there is no doubt that they are heading in that direction.

When I was in high school in the 1990s, around half a decade after the 1989 protests were crushed in Tiananmen Square, one of our classrooms had a large poster in French that said “PLACE TIAN AN MEN” commemorating the massacre. In those days, the protests would have seemed to be part of the supposed liberalization process of China. We were told that China was going to become liberal and peaceful and trade

would make China rich and we would all get along in the new world order.

It was the 1990s, the US was astride the world, sending troops to Haiti, Somalia, Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and elsewhere. We were doing humanitarian intervention and then “pre-emption” and “nation-building,” supporting democracy and

“global policing.”

China was doing something else. Then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping sought a foreign policy that made China appear weaker than it was; summed up by “observe calmly, secure our position, cope with affairs calmly, hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership.”

Over time it became clear that between 2011 and 2014 this was a facade. Deng’s was succeeded by Jiang Zemin and then Hu Jintao. By this time some were predicting that China was waiting for the opportunity to take revenge. The Economist said in 2010 “less biding and hiding.”

After Xi Jinping came to power, the Belfer Center at

Harvard published an interview with Kevin Rudd, of the Asia Society, “for 35 years or more now, there’s been a trend in China. These politics initiated by Deng are meant to normalize the functions of the Chinese state, as opposed to the party always dominating the state. Xi Jinping has turned that trend around and we now see an assertion, or re-assertion of the party’s absolute power. That’s the first point.”

It’s clear where this is heading.

A Chinese warship recently conducted an unsafe maneuver near a US warship and a Chinese warplane performed an “aggressive maneuver” near an American Boeing RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft a few days ago.

CNN notes that “the US Indo-Pacific Command said, a Chinese destroyer had cut across the bow of the USS Chung-Hoon during a joint exercise between American and Canadian navy vessels in the Taiwan Strait.”

Sensing that it is time to unite the authoritarians to challenge the US in the Pacific, Russia launched a naval drill this week. Moscow state media TASS said that the “Pacific Fleet forces have started practicing tasks of the operational exercise kicked off in the Sea of

Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk, the Russian Defense Ministry told reporters.”

From June 5-20 under the guidance of Admiral Viktor Liina, the Fleet Commander, Russia will send 60 ships and dozens of aircraft to sea. Moscow’s drills may be a far cry from the failures of the Russian navy more than a century ago at the Battle of Tsushima, but overall, Russia can’t challenge the West in the Pacific. China is different, however. It wants to challenge the US slowly, like an anaconda closing in on its prey.

Almost 200 years have elapsed since the first serious interactions began between the US and China. The first US navy ship to arrive in China was the USS Congress in 1820. In the 1830s the first American missionaries arrived in China and the US gained treaty access to various ports in the 1840s. In those days, the US and China were much different countries, smaller on the world stage. Today, they appear headed for collision, and the authoritarian tendencies that occurred after Tiananmen Square are part of that process.

The two processes are linked: China’s policy of hiding its intentions, and the West’s view that everything will turn out fine in the end.