Pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong should be admired for continuing to push back against China's "increasingly Orwellian system" as Chinese forces reportedly gathered near the Hong Kong border amid rising tensions, a foreign affairs analyst and academic says.
It comes after 43 people appeared in a Hong Kong court charged with rioting after eight consecutive weeks of anti-government protests.
Last week, masked assailants attacked protestors and commuters on a Hong Kong subway station. Police officers were accused of failing to intervene in the attack. Meanwhile, 10 other protestors were injured this week after they were pelted with fireworks in a drive-by attack outside a Hong Kong police station.
The activists were gathered outside the police station where a number of protestors were being held. (Source: Other)
Busan National University professor Robert Kelly, who is visiting New Zealand, called the rising tensions between China and the former British colony "a really, really difficult dilemma for the Chinese Communist Party".
"Everyone remembered Tiananmen Square, and the real concern, I think, for the Chinese government now for 20 years has been that Hong Kong democracy and freedom could spread into the mainland," he told TVNZ1's Breakfast.
"This is the most, sort of, extreme outburst in Hong Kong against the party's desire to sort of implement further mainland control."
The acclaimed foreign affairs analyst said it "wouldn’t surprise" him if "at some point, that the Chinese Communist Party actually sent their security force".
"I don't think there'd be the military – that would be a pretty extreme step – but I would imagine that there’s a limit to how much longer they'll allow these protests to go."
Mr Kelly called the Hong Kong protestors’ actions "very admirable", noting that they are "doing the best they can to sort of carve out and maintain this sort of special, unique Hong Kong" in the wake of an "increasingly Orwellian system in China with all the social control and all the cameras everywhere and social credit".
He added that westerners "should sort of admire the protesters for pushing back" on China as they attempt to regain control over the autonomous territory.
"Ultimately, if China’s ever going to liberalise, it's going to look a lot like what Hong Kong is now," he said. "Hong Kong is sort of like a tiny little model of what China might be, as opposed to what it is now."
Protestors ransacked Parliament over a draft law that would make extradition to China easier. (Source: Other)
Mr Kelly said tensions are unlikely to mirror the horror of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, in which troops with assault rifles and tanks fired at demonstrators. The estimated death toll from the incident varies from several hundred people to several thousand.
"My sense is the [Communist Party] has probably learned its lesson from Tiananmen and the crackdown will be a lot more benign," he said.
"I don't think you'll see things like armoured vehicles and stuff like you did last time, but there will probably be these things like curfews; there'll probably be military forces or security forces filling public spaces and stuff like that – shutting down public transportation and things like that.
"The Chinese really got burned pretty badly in the wake of Tiananmen Square where everybody remembers the image of Tank Man and stuff like that. The party's pretty smart – I don’t think they’ll do that again."
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