Derwin Pereira

Opinion | Hong Kong’s protests, and its future, matter not just to China but also to the rest of the world

Protesters are waging a battle for Hong Kong’s future. Equally, the confrontation reflects a showdown between two global orders – one led by the liberal West and the other by the authoritarian Chinese model

The only way out is for Hong Kong to accept that it is part of China, and for China to accept that Hong Kong is different

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Derwin Pereira

Published: 9:00am, 25 Sep 2019Updated: 9:03am, 25 Sep 2019

Over the past three months, protesters in Hong Kong have proved that the return of their territory to China in 1997 was not an event cast in political stone.

Admittedly, there are two kinds of protesters. The first are what we might call civic dissidents, or those who have come out into the open to push back China's increasing encroachment into the “one country, two systems” arrangement under which Britain handed the territory back to China.

The second are anarchic dissidents, who employ violent tactics to demonstrate their defiance of Chinese rule. Whether the latter are democratic extremists or paid agents of external forces – and, if so, which forces – may never be known. What is true is that there are more peaceful demonstrators than their violent counterparts. Otherwise, all of Hong Kong would have been in flames by now. It is not.

However, what the demonstrators have done collectively is to prove that, long before the 50-year “one country, two systems” formula expires in 2047, China will have to come to terms with Hong Kong's autonomy. Equally, however, Hong Kong residents need to acknowledge China's sovereignty as the framework of that autonomy. Only in that way can Hong Kong recover from the protests.

The tussle over Hong Kong's future is not a purely domestic issue. It involves a showdown over two contrasting systems of international order.