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As Hong Kong’s protests escalate, a growing number of observers are asking when and if China will dispatch troops to end them. Read more

As Hong Kong’s protests escalate, a growing number of observers are asking when and if China will dispatch troops to end them. Having nearly suppressed dissent within China outside Hong Kong, President Xi Jinping has to fear the autonomous province’s protests inspiring similar outbreaks elsewhere across China. He also has to calculate the international reaction to his crushing the protesters.

Given the numbers involved, it will prove far deadlier than 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre. Even Xi’s most ardent Western apologists will face difficulty defending his actions. While the West must not encourage the protesters, Western nations, particularly Britain and the United States, must inform Xi that any intervention will determine their relations with China throughout the next decade. They must also be ready for a politico-economic response should he ignore their warnings.

China’s reported massing of troops along Hong Kong’s border puts it on the precipice of violating an international agreement, the Sino-British Reversion Agreement that returned Hong Kong to China. That agreement guaranteed the former colony a special autonomous status, in effect a second, more democratic system within China’s Communist Party-ruled authoritarian People’s Republic.

Also, China in recent years, like Germany in the 1930s, has moved away from expanding participatory governance to strongman rule under a single all-powerful leader, Xi Jinping, who controls the levers of power both within the government and the single, ruling party. Nor do the parallels end there.

Xi has imprisoned over 1 million of his citizens in re-education camps, and while there is no evidence they are death camps along the lines of the Nazi concentration camps, today’s Muslim Uighur detainees, like those of the 1930s, were selected for their ethnicity and religion. Yet, China’s actions have drawn little criticism. Not even the “Muslim World’s” leading countries have condemned China’s actions, much as few world leaders initially excoriated Hitler’s camps over 80 years ago.

Xi is also suppressing dissidence, oppressed a wide range of religious groups beyond Muslims, imprisoning hundreds if not thousands, and established a “Great Firewall,” to restrict his citizens’ access to alternate information sources. He is establishing history’s first all-encom- passing digital police state and, like his 1930s counterpart, Western companies are assisting his efforts. Google and Facebook, among others, accept China’s censorship rules and have provided technologies vital to the security services’ monitoring operations.

They are also involved in China’s artificial intelligence and other advanced technology research efforts. China’s new National Defense White Paper speaks of the “fusion of civil-military” functions and activities. All aspects of Chinese life falls under the party’s authority and Xi is increasing the party’s and government’s involvement in the country’s commercial and research activities.

China has also retreated from establishing consistent rule of law, both domestically and internationally. As several American, Australian and Canadian businessmen have discovered recently, Chinese authorities will detain them, or constrain their movements when tensions arise between Beijing and the businessmen’s governments. Additionally, Beijing has become a regional bully, sinking its neighbors’ fishing craft and leaving their crews to drown. So far, the Philippines and Vietnam are the primary victims and while the loss of life has been comparatively light, such criminal behavior should be universally condemned. But so far, only the United States and the victims’ countries have criticized the practice.

Which brings us back to Hong Kong. Xi presently is calculating the need and cost of silencing Hong Kong’s dissent. Beijing’s transgressions have drawn little global protest so far. It is time to change that, but it won’t be easy or simple. China is a more challenging power to constrain than Nazi Germany, or even the former Soviet Union. It is stronger economically, integrated more deeply into the global trading system, is a far greater contributor to international organizations, has invested heavily and effectively in Western opinion-shaping industries (e.g. academia, entertainment); and enjoys a global media presence.

All that doesn’t mean the world should ignore China’s bad behavior, but rather, it should identify the methods and means to constrain that behavior and develop a strategy to do so. Silence before, or worse, in the face of a Hong Kong massacre will not be golden. It will open the door to far worse future actions.

Carl O. Schuster is a retired Navy captain and adjunct professor at Hawaii Pacific University.