LettersHong Kong protesters asking the US for help plays into Washington's strategy against China

Not only would the US be unwilling to take serious risks for Hong Kong’s sake, realist theory of international relations suggests Washington is likely to use Hong Kong as a bargaining chip in the US-China conflict

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Anti-government protesters wave American flags at Chater Garden in Central on September 8, the day thousands marched to the US consulate, requesting US assistance for their cause. Photo: Simone McCarthy

Published: 7:20am, 13 Sep 2019Updated: 6:54pm, 13 Sep 2019

A major strategy of the Hong Kong protesters is seemingly to garner as much international support as possible, especially from Western democratic countries to pressure China’s central government to meet their demands. This is evident in their direct appeal to the United States and United Kingdom. Some protesters even hold up the national flags of these two countries in their demonstrations.

Is this effective and will other countries come to Hong Kong’s aid? With US senators pushing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act this week, it would seem that the answer is yes and that the protesters’ strategy is working. However, the act is not so much designed to help Hong Kong as to be a component of US strategy to contain China. It will be a key bargaining chip in future trade negotiations with China.

This act undermines the sovereignty of China under the pretext of upholding freedom and democracy. It ignores both the Chinese and Hong Kong government’s repeated warnings to the US not to interfere in China’s domestic affairs. The legislation would allow the US to slap on new tariffs and import restrictions on Hong Kong businesses and take punitive measures against government officials deemed to be suppressing basic freedoms.

According to the realist school of thought in international relations, the world is a zero-sum game, wherein only relative gains can be made. If one country helps another increase its power, it is simultaneously decreasing its own. Thus, all states must ensure their own security because no other agency or actor can be counted on to do so.

Based on this framework, it is foolish to ask foreign powers to come to Hong Kong’s aid. Allowing Hong Kong’s deterioration is in the best interests of other countries, since a decline in China’s power would mean a relative increase in their own. During the Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996, Chinese General Xiong Guangkai once remarked that the US would not intervene because it “cared more about Los Angeles than Taipei”. The same holds true in the case of Hong Kong.