Violent protests brings out the tanks and people start dying literally in the streets. Unless you are talking about actual revolution, violent protest accomplishes nothing and results in losing the moral high ground which is critical if one is to have international support. Violent protest in Hong Kong would result in Beijing sending in soldiers to suppress the rebellion under the guise of “public safety.” You get martial law and its justified (using their calculus) as protecting people from harm from the violent protesters. Violent protest in China would result in thousands dead and Beijing accelerating the 2047 expiration of the two systems, one country agreement. Bad idea.
So if Beijing is just going to send military force if they perceive something that will truly threaten change in HK, but they did not send anything, what does that tell you about the probable outcome of these non-violent protests?
I think the protestors are fighting the good fight, but I'm not holding my breath that anything will actually come about because 2 million people stood in the street.
Violent protest that is not “actual revolution” doesn’t bring change. It just leads to fighting in the streets as the parent said.
compare the violent protests that ignited the Syrian civil war (actual revolution) to the violent protests that resulted in no actual revolution (Rodney King riots, yellow vests in France, etc) to consider the difference, I think.
There is little distinction. One leads to another.
If you can dig news in well, you know that Syria began with some bakers protesting flour price hike and them roughing up some policemen.
A lot of revolutions stared with public disturbance events which had only tangential relation to political context, with Russian revolution being the best known example
China has learned a lot since 1989, not necessarily the best lessons, but they at least have a well trained non lethal anti riot force (part of the PAP) and wouldn’t resort to the PLA unless as a best last resort even in mainland cities. One of the tragedies of 1989 is that China basically had no non lethal anti riot capabilities.
When a government deploys violence anyway people do have a right of self-defense. There's a broad spectrum of criminality from refusal to disperse following an order to do so, through interferences with public property like removal or deployment of barricades, through interference, confiscation or damage to vehicles, through direct physical confrontation which has its own escalatory tree.
Non-violence is a position but must have limits, otherwise you are demanding that people become punchbags of the state and preemptively invalidating all resistance against oppression, thereby amplifying the oppressor's narrative. A government in sufficient trouble will kill nonviolent people anyway and while it will lose moral legitimacy it is often willing to accept that as the price of strategic advantage, because the reality is that state actors can get away with killing people under many circumstances.
What we sometimes see (as here) is a triangle between government, capital, and people. Capital threatens to depart if government is overly aggressive and likes to pat itself on the back for its regulatory capability, but at the same time capital uses government to keep people subservient to those who control the wealth; one might say it's similar to fleecing sheep and aiming to slaughter as few and as humanely as possible. Large capital interests farm people within the legal and executive infrastructure of states for all practical purposes.
It would be a huge risk. China is on the ropes in the political theater. Sending military troops to put down civilians in a free trade capital of the world would not earn them any favors.
I could see the 2047 date being extended. Hong Kong, as a percentage of China's total GDP, is just 2%, whereas back in 1997 it was about a quarter. Hong Kong isn't as economically relevant to China as it once was. So, let it be as-is under "One Country, Two Systems" to keep the peace with trade partners.
I doubt that any of this is even passes by Beijing strategic calculus.
Above protests being violent or non-violent, what concerns Beijing more is them keeping going for that long.
What Beijing truly fears the most is them made look powerless. Pretty much the sole point of propaganda in China is to instill the idea of the state being allpowerful, and omnipotent.
