Letters | Why Mao Zedong was right not to send the PLA into Hong Kong before 1997

Unlike Indian prime minister Nehru who sent the army into Hyderabad after the British left India, Chairman Mao refrained from using military force to take back Hong Kong. The decision is still paying off for China decades later

Hong Kong protests

Letters

Published: 6:50am, 16 Sep 2019

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There is a specific historical explanation for the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong. When it came to the British enclave of Hong Kong 70 years ago, Chairman Mao Zedong and premier Zhou Enlai chose a different policy than Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and home minister Vallabhbhai Patel did for the princely state of Hyderabad when the British left India. The People’s Liberation Army stopped at the Hong Kong border; the enclave was allowed to remain British, then granted special status and a different “system” from the one on the mainland. Mao and Zhou had their reasons.

In India, Nehru and Patel made a different assessment of a similar situation. The state of Hyderabad had formally declared itself independent when the British left the Indian subcontinent, but the Indian army occupied the state and forced it to join India.

Mao and Zhou’s decision on Hong Kong, on the other hand, was rational. I still believe they made the correct political assessment. Their choice not to send in the army has clearly paid off.

An occupation of Hong Kong would have been entirely possible. Sure, Britain and the United States would have made verbal protests. But they would not have declared war on China over Hong Kong. Instead, the conflict that later emerged and almost went nuclear was over Korea.

But even there, it proved necessary for the US to avoid the nuclear option and to eventually, after a nasty, bloody conflict, accept the ceasefire that still holds.

In 1949, although the victorious PLA had been fully prepared to march to the border and retake Hong Kong, the enclave was allowed to remain under British rule. Eventually, Hong Kong returned to China under a special arrangement. The capitalist city of Hong Kong was surely an enormous gain and a contributing factor to China’s evolution into an economic giant.

Despite all that is now happening in Hong Kong, Mao’s assessment has proved to be most profitable for China for seven decades.

When there is an ideological or political conflict between the West and China for fully explainable economic reasons, it is both possible and sensible for those in the West to consider these realities. Even when there is a direct conflict, China’s actions are politically realistic from a Chinese point of view and understandable as such from outside China.

Jan Myrdal, Varberg, Sweden

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