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Wang Jen-shu, the first ambassador to Indonesia of the People’s Republic of China, spent a troubled couple of years as Beijing’s man in Jakarta in the early 1950s. He clashed repeatedly with a prime minister, Sukiman Wirjosandjojo, known for pro-American sympathies, as he sought to advance the shared interests of the Chinese and Indonesian communist parties.

Wang, a firebrand writer of poetry and short stories who published under the name Baren, had been a stalwart of the Chinese Communist Party from the 1920s. He spent the war years in Indonesia and spoke the language fluently. But the belief of Chinese leaders that Indonesians saw ‘their own tomorrow’ in the Chinese people proved badly wrong.

They misread the strength of their position in Indonesia. Wang gave speeches critical of the US, railed against a Sukiman crackdown on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and tried to lure local Chinese away from the rival Kuomintang. Sukiman retaliated by forbidding the entry of a group of Chinese officials and restricting consular activity. Wang was eventually called home, the bilateral relationship in disrepair.

The awkward start to relations between the two newly declared republics set the scene for a roller-coaster relationship in the following decades. From the opening of diplomatic relations in April 1950 until Jakarta unilaterally broke them off in October 1967, Indonesia and China veered from being virtual allies under one president, Sukarno, to bitter foes under another, Suharto.

To varying degrees, Indonesia’s neighbours in Southeast Asia shared these difficulties, witnessing upheaval in their international and domestic affairs as a direct result of the emergence on the Asian mainland in 1949 of a united, communist-controlled China bent on asserting its influence in the developing world.

Cold War superpower rivalry, communist insurgencies often backed by Beijing, precarious relationships with local Chinese populations, and fragile, ideologically divided domestic politics bedevilled the management of ties between China and Southeast Asian countries that were struggling to build viable states and modern economies at the end of an era of European colonisation.

China’s fraught relationship with the region only started to change in the 1970s—first, with the Sino-American détente and, second, with the launch of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s open-door economic policy. By then, Beijing had renounced contentious foreign policy doctrines like united fronts with overseas communist parties and ‘third camps’ in opposition to both US and Russian power. Deng’s economic pragmatism and his ongoing rapprochement with the US established a new foundation for China’s foreign policy and diplomacy in Southeast Asia.

Still, the story of the past 70 years of China’s relations with a region of immense strategic importance to it has remained one of simultaneous opportunity and apprehension.

Generations of Southeast Asian leaders have been drawn to Beijing in recognition of the vast economic and strategic potential of China. They have also brought with them long memories and lingering concerns over how China uses or abuses its power. And they have viewed the accomplishments of the Chinese political system and people with both admiration and ambivalence, probably in equal measure.

Along the way, Beijing has had only mixed success with its regional foreign policy and diplomacy.

It has enjoyed its moments of ascendency, like during the Asian financial crisis in 1997 when it refused to devalue the yuan, relieving pressure on the Thai baht and Indonesia rupiah, or in the early 2000s when a charm offensive under presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao saw China emphasise respect for the sovereignty of ASEAN states, sign their treaty of amity and cooperation, and start negotiations on a code of conduct in the South China Sea.

It also has been embroiled in a variety of conflicts with countries that have very different histories, cultures and national interests. The problems have not always been of China’s making. Within months of Beijing’s diplomatic win during the financial crisis, Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan delivered a blunt warning to Indonesia over the deliberate targeting of ethnic Chinese in the riots of May 1998, which he said had sparked ‘indignation among Chinese all over the globe’.

But too often China has been guilty of overreach. No strategic issue has loomed larger for Southeast Asia in recent years than China’s unilateral declaration in 2009 of sovereignty over more than 80% of the South China Sea. It’s not just the claim that’s caused angst; it’s what it says about the calibre of Beijing’s strategic judgement and how China will behave as it becomes militarily and economically stronger.

China is steadily acquiring the military capability to project power over vital Southeast Asian sea lanes as it builds bases in the South China Sea. For archipelagic states that regard control of waterways as intrinsic to national cohesion and ideas of sovereignty, this is a sensitive issue.

Against this backdrop, the martial character of the 70th anniversary parade overseen by President Xi Jinping might be a matter of pride to China, but it can appear unnerving to its neighbours. It invites attention to a yawning gap between the rhetoric of Chinese leaders in recent years and their actions.

Pham Quang Vinh, a former senior official in the Vietnamese foreign ministry, accuses China of using ‘intimidation and coercion’ to assert its claims in the South China Sea, raising the question of whether it can really negotiate a code of conduct for the area in ‘good faith’.

It’s a sentiment many others share, but feel powerless to do much about. Malaysia harbours grievances over the oppression of Uyghur and Hui Muslims in China and the regular intrusion of Chinese survey vessels into what Kuala Lumpur regards as national waters.

‘We don’t go around trying to be aggressive when we don’t have the capacity, so we use other means’, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in an interview with local media just ahead of the PRC anniversary. But in a subtle jab at Beijing, he referred to how in the days of imperial China emperors exacted tribute in the form of ‘gold and silver flowers every year as a symbol of our being practically, well, subservient to them’.

Xi has promised peaceful engagement and mutual benefit in dealing with Southeast Asia in a ‘community of shared interests and common destiny’. Much of that is built on the pull of Chinese trade and investment. With two-way trade of US$588 billion, China is Southeast Asia’s biggest trading partner.

But there are worries the economy too could be a source of leverage for Beijing to pursue its strategic ambitions. Across the region, governments are hedging against dependency on Chinese markets and capital.

Even as they sign up to infrastructure projects under China’s huge Belt and Road Initiative, they spread the risk by inviting other countries to participate in major investments. For example, India is building a deep-water port at Sabang in Aceh, on the westernmost tip of the Indonesian archipelago, which Indian media say will give New Delhi ‘wide access to Southeast Asia as a counter-balancing force’.

The implied message to Beijing is that ‘we need you, but you need us’, according to Philips Vermonte, the executive director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.

The key question is whether China and the region can reach an understanding that avoids the trap of repeating a conflicted history. Southeast Asia eagerly embraced the softer version of Chinese power on display during the charm offensive of the early 2000s. The region now inevitably has to create space for a more powerful China that wants to see the regional order ‘gradually readjusted and reconstructed’.

How that is done could prove very unsettling to a region that prizes its own autonomy as much as the opportunity inherent in Chinese wealth. China too will have to recognise that it serves many of its own core interests when it accommodates the interests of its southern neighbours.

The massive military parade on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China generated a huge amount of interest, mostly because of the slew of new military capabilities on display. The parade in Beijing demonstrated the cutting edge of the Chinese state’s military capability, with some key weapons systems on show that haven’t been seen before.

These new military capabilities—once deployed operationally—will increase the Chinese state’s ability to undertake anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) operations so that it can deter and deny US and allied military intervention into the western Pacific in a future crisis.

Most notable was the DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle. An HGV is launched by a traditional ballistic missile and then follows a flight path within the atmosphere, at velocities of up to Mach 10 (approximately 12,350 kilometres per hour). HGVs are designed to manoeuvre in a way that enables them to evade ballistic-missile and naval air-defence systems. Although the DF-17 could carry a nuclear warhead, it’s more likely to carry a conventional one in order to maximise the system’s operational utility. The system on display was atop a DF-16, which normally has a range of between 800 and 1,000 kilometres; the HGV would extend that somewhat.

China’s deployment of the DF-17, along with Russia’s deployment of its Avanguard HGV, means the US is trailing both its peer adversaries in this critical capability area. The US is focusing its efforts on deploying a ‘common HGV’ that could be launched from land, sea and air platforms as early as 2023.

Systems like the DF-17 need effective and timely intelligence on possible targets like US aircraft carrier battlegroups, for example. The WZ-8 rocket drone is designed for very high altitude supersonic flight and could fill this role. Two WZ-8s were on display during the parade. The drone shouldn’t be confused with the GJ-11 ‘Sharp Sword’ unmanned combat aerial vehicle, which was also shown for the first time. The WZ-8 is a rocket-powered reconnaissance platform designed to be air-launched and operate at approximately 46 kilometres above the earth (that’s halfway to space). Tyler Rogoway of The War Zone estimates that its airspeed at altitude would be 5,287 kilometres per hour, or around Mach 4.5.

The WZ-8 would act as high-speed eyes for long-range A2/AD systems such as the DF-17 or the DF-26 anti-ship missile. It could cover a large maritime region quickly, identify a target, and share that information with ‘shooters’ such as People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force ballistic missile units. Its high altitude, high speed and stealthy design would make it virtually impossible to intercept.

Another interesting weapon system on show was the YJ-100 cruise missile. This appears to be a ground-launched system that would fly at high supersonic or hypersonic velocities to strike either land- or sea-based targets. Analysis in The War Zone suggests it’s a large two-stage missile, with an air-breathing ramjet for long-range, high-speed flight.

In the air, the PLA Air Force flew a formation of H-6K and H-6N bombers. The H-6N is the most interesting platform to consider, given that it has an airborne refuelling capability and is reputed to be able to carry an air-launched ballistic missile known as the CH-AS-X-13, which is thought to be based on the ground-launched DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile system.

Such a capability would give China the ability to launch ALBMs from beyond the first island chain at an opponent’s naval carrier battlegroups or land bases. The CH-AS-X-13 is reported to have twice the range of the DF-21D, and could strike targets about 3,000 kilometres further on from its launch from an H-6N, which itself has a range of 6,000 kilometres.

All of these new capabilities were accompanied by other systems that have been displayed before, including the DF-26 and the YJ-18 long-range anti-ship cruise missile, as well as a plethora of long-range nuclear missiles. Among those was the DF-41, which went on show for the first time, and is considered the world’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, supplanting the Soviet Union’s SS-18 ‘Satan’. Large numbers of tanks and armoured vehicles, electronic warfare capabilities, and mobile surface-to-air missile systems were also on show.

Watching the PLA showcase its new hardware was interesting, but the key issue to consider is the military and strategic implications of the parade. Is there a policy ‘so what’ for Australia and others to all this Chinese military grandiosity?

First, while Beijing’s diplomatic representations to Canberra argue that we should eschew ‘Cold War mindsets’, nothing screams a Cold War mentality more than nuclear missiles rolling through Tiananmen Square.

Second, the 70th anniversary parade wasn’t about the success of the Chinese people but about the continued dominance of the Chinese Communist Party over the people. Parading vast military power sends signals of both weakness and strength. The emphasis by President Xi Jinping was on the PLA as the party’s army and its function in maintaining the CCP’s—and his own—grip on power. Having to demonstrate that power to both the Chinese people and the international community suggests regime insecurity, even in a newly developed state like China, which boasts an economy second only in overall size to that of the US.

At the same time, the new capabilities on display can’t be dismissed as inconsequential for the US and its allies. It’s important that Australia, along with the US and its strategic partners, begins to consider how to contend with some of these advanced military capabilities.

Finally, those planning the future structure of the Australian Defence Force should take on board the key systems that were on show in Beijing. In particular, it’s clear that China is seeking to enhance and extend its A2/AD capability in a manner that will make it more difficult for the US and its allies, including Australia, to project power throughout the Indo-Pacific.

How the ADF responds to the increasing range, speed and striking power of Chinese air, naval and missile capabilities has to be a key priority for our defence planners and should affect our thinking about our own naval and air operations in the region. The parade is a wake-up call that we ignore at our peril.

The US is in the midst of an opioid epidemic that is showing no signs of abating. In 2017, more than 70,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, around 40% of which were linked to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Most of the synthetic opioids consumed in the US are manufactured in labs in mainland China. So last month, after years of repeated warnings, US President Donald Trump banned all imports of the drug from China.

As Australia’s own fentanyl problem grows, the Morrison government will need to consider whether our strategies for reducing the supply of opioids will coalesce around sanctions or cooperation with Chinese authorities.

Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin. In the US in 2016–17, the rate of overdose deaths from heroin had plateaued, while deaths from synthetic drugs like fentanyl increased by 45%.

In October 2017, Trump declared his nation’s opioid crisis a public health emergency and committed to use the federal government’s legal powers to ‘pursue companies that helped fuel the epidemic’.

The US immediately started a legislative process to introduce sanctions against Chinese entities involved in the production of fentanyl or fentanyl analogues. However, the bill is not law yet.

If passed, the bill will require the secretaries of state and treasury to submit an annual report identifying each person in China, including any Chinese government officials, involved in the production and distribution of fentanyl to the US.

At the same time, Trump, in his typical brusque fashion, promised to raise the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying, ‘he will do something about it’.

In December last year, in response to Trump’s demands, Xi’s government committed to cracking down on the production and shipment of fentanyl.

On 23 August, with trade tensions between China and the US increasing, Trump announced that he was ‘ordering’ the US Postal Service and express shipping companies to search for and refuse all deliveries of fentanyl.

Closer to home, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission reported earlier this year that data from its national wastewater monitoring program shows a noticeable increase in fentanyl use over the past two years in several locations across Australia.

The Pennington Institute’s Australian annual overdose report 2019 notes that that in 2017 there were 904 unintentional opioid-induced deaths, equating to 56% of all unintentional overdose deaths for that year. Between 2005 and 2017, the number of deaths from fentanyl overdoses increased by more than 1,000% (from 12 to 198).

The possibility of a large-scale Australian opioid crisis seems very real, but would a sanctions regime for Chinese fentanyl manufacturers be possible or appropriate here?

Australia currently operates an autonomous sanctions regime—separate from its obligations to implement UN Security Council sanctions—through legislative instruments associated with the Autonomous Sanctions Act 2011.

Although parliament created the regime, it doesn’t oversee its implementation. That responsibility rests solely with the foreign minister, who can create legislative instruments to add countries and associated entities into the framework. The minister would therefore have oversight of any trade sanctions imposed against China.

Trade sanctions under the Autonomous Sanctions Act are currently in force against Iran, Myanmar, Russia, Syria and Zimbabwe, as well as Crimea and the peninsula’s main city of Sevastopol.

The two primary reasons trade sanctions are imposed are for breaches of the territorial integrity or sovereignty of another country (as in the case of the Crimea, Russia and Sevastopol sanctions) or for human rights abuses and the use of violence against civilians (as with Syria).

So imposing trade sanctions under this regime against foreign drug and precursor manufacturers would represent a significant departure from how it has previously been used. Such a move could be viewed as equating the poor regulation and enforcement of China’s licit and illicit pharmaceutical industry with the Russian invasion of Crimea or the current situation in Syria—and that’s not something Australia is likely to do anytime soon.

Fundamentally, the purpose of sanctions is punitive. They have significant normative weight in international affairs. While invoking sanctions in this case would signal how serious Australia is about the need to combat the drug crisis, it would be a significant escalation in an already tense relationship with the Chinese government. And it would have little impact on fentanyl supply chains.

In our opinion, sanctions against Chinese pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturers would be unwieldy and difficult to manage.

The size and opaqueness of the Chinese illicit drug industry, and its supply chains, would make it difficult to apply sanctions effectively. Identifying and monitoring entities and individuals involved in the production of synthetic illicit drugs in China, without Chinese government assistance, would be resource-intensive and challenging.

It also seems unlikely that Australia’s sanctions regime would be agile enough to respond to the constant changes in China’s industrial landscape in which the labs and people involved in producing these substances are always evolving.

As the Chinese government continues to crack down on the country’s illicit drug supply, the production of fentanyl and its analogues is likely to move to neighbouring countries in the Mekong region.

Instead of sanctions, Australia would be much better served by bolstering resources to inspect incoming mail—particularly mail from China and smaller packages ordered from dark online markets. Australia could also focus on building on the success of existing bilateral law enforcement and border management arrangements.

In How to defend Australia, Hugh White refers to the ‘deepest national objectives: security, prosperity and identity’, observing that states seem ‘willing to risk war to pursue these objectives, even at potentially appalling cost’. Security, prosperity and identity are often interleaved and interconnected in indiscernible and inextricable ways. They won’t be advanced in a war.

Historical examples or analogies of how wars start and how particular battles and campaigns are won abound. Yet there is only one universally applicable lesson from history: wars never bring about the strategic objectives the protagonists desire. That’s obviously true for the losers, but also for the victors. Wars have disruptive and transformative consequences that affect the domestic arrangements and the international relations of the participants.

Napoleon’s complex career was inseparable from the French Revolution. Although it encountered religious and monarchist resistance, a new French identity of secular, liberal republicanism began to emerge following the revolution. During his ascendancy from soldier to emperor, Napoleon added a new political outcome to the ongoing transformation of France—that of elevating the state above society.

Napoleon not only fostered the elements of the modern administrative nation-state in France, but through his conquests introduced recognisably modern administrative institutions across much of Europe. He inherited and then expanded and introduced to Europe ‘the first modern bureaucracy’. He instituted the first recognisable ‘“security state”, with its unprecedented levels of administrative surveillance and police repression’. The Napoleonic wars transformed Europe in ways that the victorious monarchs, emperors and tsars would be unable to reverse. In the wake of Napoleon, European identities were transforming into something different and unexpected.

World War I provides an even starker example of conflict not producing expected outcomes for the identity or security of the participants. As a result of the war, ‘The pre-war state system was destroyed and the prestige of the major European powers throughout the world was undermined.’ The war created the opportunity for the Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia. The German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed. The colonial powers France and Britain were weakened financially and economically by the conflict. Millions of Europeans formerly in subject populations found themselves the citizens of new nations. Japan’s star rose in Asia to the ruin and subjugation of Korea and much of China.

World War I made the participants less, not more, secure. It radically changed the identities of the nations involved. And it laid the path to World War II. Again, major war had failed to achieve for the antagonists their ‘security, prosperity and identity’. World War II would be no different. Europe was divided, the European empires entered their terminal phase, the Cold War began, China fell to the communists, and the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war for the next four decades. The US national security state was born.

Now we hear again the voices of those willing to go to war to defend Australia’s ‘security, prosperity and identity’. Is it reasonable to expect, despite the historical examples to the contrary, that this time the deepest national objectives could be achieved by a major war?

The problem with most proposals for ramping up or reforming Australia’s strategic policy is that they hold out the prospect of success. They posit that the right strategy, capability, planning, preparedness and force posture can lead to the successful defence of Australia against a great power. They hold out confidently the prospect that Australia can be defended somewhere off shore—in the sea approaches or through alliance operations in the Northeast Asian maritime periphery.

There are two options in this narrative. One is what might be called the prudent White version, where Australia needs to seriously consider the prospect of defending itself against China after the US withdraws, becomes impotent or is unwilling to contest with China and defend its ally. To examine White’s ‘security, prosperity and identity’ claim under these circumstances from China’s perspective, it would seem that, if the Chinese were determined to launch an attack on Australia, they would be pursuing strategic military objectives tied closely to their own ‘deepest national objectives’.

In that case, the Chinese wouldn’t be likely to come under-resourced and with a strategy that optimised Australia’s chances of succeeding. They wouldn’t play into Australia’s hands. They presumably would have the sense to manoeuvre forces and attack weaknesses—or simply overwhelm or use attrition—to succeed in the campaign. They would come to win.

The other option is that the US regains so-called leadership in the Asia–Pacific in a definitive conflict with China. If it didn’t go nuclear, that would undoubtedly be a protracted and destructive war involving massive casualties, the displacement of huge populations, and the destruction of large amounts of civil and military industrial, transport, communications and service-delivery infrastructure. It would almost certainly extend to space and would inevitably envelop Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The legacy would feed regional antagonism for generations.

Like with other major wars before it, the world would be transformed and the protagonists badly weakened. After the conflict, those great powers that sat it out—perhaps India, Russia and Europe—would find their relative global strength greatly increased. The capacity of the US to exercise influence in the Middle East, Latin America or other regions could be greatly diminished. China’s economy and political stability, and perhaps its unity, would suffer. The aftermath would be unpredictable.

Security, prosperity and identity would suffer in either case.

It’s not that Australia doesn’t need a capable defence force. We do. And there are many roles for it. The danger is that political leaders will come to believe that Australia is defensible against a great power. That belief simply encourages reckless decision-making.

Australia’s deepest national objectives can only be preserved if avoiding war is the overriding strategic goal.

After 13 straight weekends of unrelenting protests and an increasingly harsh police response, Hong Kong’s worst political crisis since its reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 appears to have become an intractable stalemate with no clear way out.

The territory’s Beijing-backed chief executive, Carrie Lam, has openly rejected all the protesters’ demands, including a formal withdrawal of her widely reviled China extradition bill, which triggered the unrest; an independent inquiry into police violence; amnesty for arrested demonstrators and dropping the labelling of the protests as ‘riots’; and restarting Hong Kong’s stalled political reform process. Lam seems to believe that she can quell the protests through attrition, waning public support and brutal police force, including mass arrests.

The protesters, on the other hand, seem undeterred by the escalating police actions. At the weekend, riot police raided subway stations and train carriages, indiscriminately clubbing suspected demonstrators with batons, and widely firing tear gas, rubber bullets and chemical dye from water cannon. Public support seems undampened and popular ire is directed more at the police than at the handful of radical demonstrators.

But there is a way out of the impasse, before violence takes Hong Kong into the abyss. It’s a solution that would require a series of compromises from both sides, involving painful short-term and long-term concessions that both sides might be loath to accept. It may just bring Hong Kong back from the brink.

The first step is the easiest: Lam must formally withdraw the extradition bill. She has already announced that the bill is suspended, or in her words ‘dead’. But she’s playing semantic games. ‘Dead’ is not a legal term. The public fears that, without a formal withdrawal, she could bring it up again for a second and decisive reading before the current legislature’s term expires next summer.

By avoiding the formality of an official withdrawal, Lam is clearly only trying to save face—either her own, or that of the Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing, who are reportedly averse to any sign of concession to protesters. Withdrawal would amount to a public admission that the bill was unnecessary and a mistake. But the time for face-saving is long past. In the current atmosphere of mistrust, failure to withdraw the bill only fuels suspicion that Lam has a hidden agenda to reintroduce it once passions cool.

The second concession is far more difficult. The government should establish an independent commission to investigate violence on all sides—by the protesters and police—and then grant amnesty from prosecution to anyone who engaged in unlawful acts.

People on both sides are likely to be critical of any such arrangement. Ordinary citizens want to see prosecutions for police who hid their identification numbers and beat subdued demonstrators with batons, who sprayed tear gas inside of subway stations and shopping malls, and who appeared to collude with gangsters by deliberately delaying their response to a 21 July triad attack on commuters at Yuen Long.

Likewise, police and government supporters will be incensed to see amnesty given to young protestors who defaced the Chinese emblem and threw the Chinese flag into the harbour, who threw bricks and other projectiles at police, and who defied police bans to organise large-scale marches.

There is a precedent; South Africa in the 1990s, after the end of apartheid, launched a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ to help heal the wounds of that divided country. The idea was that the commission would allow for a public airing of all crimes committed, but that the polarised country could only move forward if amnesty were granted to both sides.

At the time, the South African panel was derided by some as a ‘Kleenex Commission’ that would merely whitewash away the many sins of the violent apartheid era. But I covered South Africa in the lead-up to the first democratic elections, and I thought a race war seemed inevitable. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it turned out, was a brilliant way to resolve lingering grievances and allow the country to heal.

Perhaps the most difficult final step in Hong Kong will be to restart the political reform process, and here, too, both sides must accept painful concessions. The protesters must recognise that Beijing will never allow any future electoral system that leaves the outcome unknown. And Beijing’s communist leaders must accept that Hong Kong’s unrest will never be contained until people are given some say in how they are governed.

The concession will look much like the reforms rejected in 2014, which launched the Umbrella Movement, five years ago this month. Beijing could set up a selection committee that vets all the candidates for Hong Kong chief executive. Candidates would have to swear allegiance to the Chinese constitution and disavow independence—Beijing’s main ‘red line’. Then Hong Kong’s people should be given a free vote to choose among the approved candidates.

Would that be truly democratic? Not by a long shot. Is it better than the system now, where the leader is chosen by just 1,200 people, mostly pro-China figures, sitting as an ‘electoral college’? Absolutely.

Hong Kong’s current crisis is the result of the absence of politics. The chief executive and the cabinet were never elected, are unrepresentative and do not have to answer to ordinary Hong Kongers. Average citizens also feel they have no stake in a leadership system that ignores their needs, serves mostly the wealthy elite, and is answerable only to Beijing. Even a partially democratic system that lets people choose from among approved candidates is better than people having no vote and no stake at all. And that system would allow Hong Kong’s leader to claim a mandate to govern.

All of these steps would require compromise and clear-headed thinking. They can still pull Hong Kong back from the brink—if it’s not already too late.