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City Beat | Will Beijing deploy troops in Hong Kong? Taiwan can provide some clues
- Chinese should not fight against Chinese is the bottom line. So, rather than targeting Taiwan, Beijing reserves the right to safeguard its sovereignty
- Beijing is unlikely to take the most drastic step when there are several subtle yet effective ways to tackle the crisis
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Troops or no troops? That’s the billion-dollar question for Hong Kong at this critical juncture.
But that in turn begs a more fundamental question: how urgent or necessary is it for Beijing to take such an extreme step and deploy China’s military to end the protest violence and chaos sweeping the city?
Over the past few days, shocking images and video footage of military trucks rolling into a sports stadium near Shenzhen Bay, a major border check point between the city and its closest neighbour, were broadcast by state media before Hong Kong and foreign news organisations picked up the story.
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That, naturally, sparked plenty of speculation and even panic: would they cross the border anytime soon?
Mainland military experts told the Post they were actually regular armed-police drills, but there was no dismissing the fact that authorities deliberately allowed such a high-profile exposure of manoeuvres that should otherwise be low-key or even secretive affairs.
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Then came another intriguing development with the Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) posting a message on its official Weibo account that it would only take 10 minutes to reach Hong Kong from Shenzhen.
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