China Fears A Soviet-Style Collapse in Hong Kong

Grant Newsham

Security, Asia

Hungarians revolted in 1956 and lost. But the cause of freedom won in the long-run.

Two weeks have passed since the initial massive street protests in Hong Kong. It was gripping, but such events tend to quickly fade from outside observers’ collective memories. So was this just another gasp as Hong Kong slips further into mainland control? Or maybe something bigger is going on?

Things do look grim for Hong Kongers. Beijing is unlikely to back down—despite a tactical pause. Instead, operating through local Hong Kong officials, it will quietly—and ruthlessly—arrest or even “disappear” protest leaders or harass them.

And the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is harnessing technology in ways that make Soviet-era KGB surveillance and repression seem quaint.

Public protest terrifies the CCP—and not just demonstrations in Hong Kong. Beijing is desperate to erase memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the subsequent massacre of protesters in Beijing. The protesters, who were also out in large numbers in other Chinese cities, only wanted some individual liberty and an honest government in which they had a say.

Not surprisingly, the Chinese Communists have studied the collapse of the Soviet Union to avoid similar mistakes. They have had some success. But what may prove hardest is snuffing out the human desire for “freedom.” Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev—a reformer— couldn’t do it. But Joseph Stalin couldn’t either. 

It’s argued, by both the CCP some Westerners, that Western notions of “liberty” don’t suit Chinese people. That’s debatable. In fact, the Hong Kong protests might “rhyme” with events in Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth-century.

First, a little history.

In 1956, Hungarians revolted in the “Hungarian Uprising” to overthrow a Soviet-controlled government. For several weeks, Hungarian patriots fought Russian tanks. But as was inevitable, the Russians and their local accomplices returned with a vengeance; killing over 2,500 people, arresting upwards of twenty thousand and executing a few hundred, including Prime Minister Imre Nagy. Over two hundred thousand Hungarians fled to the West during the uprising or immediately afterwards.

Yet, twenty years later the American foreign policy set mostly regarded the Hungarian Uprising as just a quaint bit of history.