BEIJING — China’s authoritarian president pledged at a politically sacrosanct anniversary Tuesday that nothing would stop his nation’s ascent, but the message was marred by some of the worst anti-government violence to convulse Hong Kong, including the first police shooting of a protester.
Anticipation of a confrontation in Hong Kong on the anniversary — a holiday commemorating the 70th year of Communist rule in China — had been building since the protests began this summer in the semiautonomous territory. It intensified in recent weeks as an increasingly combative core of protesters confronted police officers who have relied more heavily on force.
The split-screen contrast of tightly choreographed goose-stepping military formations in Beijing to celebrate the National Day versus the chaos of firebombs and rubber bullets in Hong Kong was jarring and almost certainly infuriating to President Xi Jinping.
It laid bare how Xi’s image and agenda have become hostage to the months of protests, undermining his reputation for unshakable control.
As the festivities in Beijing got underway, Xi offered his government as a guarantor of “prosperity and stability” in Hong Kong. But after the parade ended, protesters in Hong Kong directly challenged China’s hold over the city, clashing with police in multiple neighborhoods that turned vast swathes of the territory into a tear gas-choked and bonfire-filled battlefield.
“I think they’ve succeeded in spoiling the show,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University who specializes in Chinese politics. “The media will be split between covering the parade in Beijing and covering what’s happening in Hong Kong.”
For Xi, every element of the military parade and civilian march marking 70 years since Mao founded the People’s Republic was designed and meticulously rehearsed to show that his authoritarian policies were transforming China into a wealthy, militarily formidable and socially united superpower.
He presided over an 80-minute parade by China’s military that included the first public showing of a missile that can carry 10 nuclear warheads and hit anywhere in the United States. A civilian march displayed the country’s economic and technological accomplishments, including its homegrown C919 jetliner, its Jade Rabbit moon rover, and a Long March space rocket.
“No force can shake the status of our great motherland,” Xi said, overlooking Tiananmen Square. “No force can obstruct the advance of the Chinese people and Chinese nation.”
While this year’s parade, as previous ones, was intended to strut the country’s military might, it also reflected a modernization program that Xi has pushed through the People’s Liberation Army.
Several new weapons made their first public appearances, including supersonic and stealth drones and an unmanned underwater vehicle. So did the country’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile, called the DF-41, which can deliver multiple nuclear warheads around the world.
All the displays of China’s economic and military strength, however, seem unable to silence those in Hong Kong who oppose Xi’s increasingly intolerant ideological rule over China.
In his speech marking the national anniversary, Xi promised to keep Hong Kong under the “one country, two systems” framework, designed to give it considerable legal and political autonomy after the British left in 1997. But critics say Xi has hijacked it to increase Chinese leverage over the city.
The protests started in June over a proposed law that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, where the party controls the courts. They quickly evolved into calls for police accountability and broader democratic changes by protesters, who felt the Hong Kong political establishment had been overly beholden to Beijing and allowed it to erode their freedoms.
In Hong Kong, protesters seized on China’s long-planned 70th anniversary celebrations as a moment to humble Xi. Tens of thousands marched through a busy shopping district in the afternoon despite a police ban. Chants of a popular protest slogan, “Reclaim Hong Kong; revolution of our times,” echoed off a canyon of skyscrapers and shuttered malls.
“I couldn’t just sit home today,” said Stanley Luk, 65, who owns a handbag factory on the mainland but joined the protest march. “There’s not much we can do. But at least we can tell Beijing no, we don’t want to live the way they do.”
Clashes quickly broke out in other areas where hundreds of black-clad protesters fought with riot police, lobbing firebombs, setting piles of trash on fire, and attacking the premises of private businesses they deemed as sympathetic to Beijing.
When the protesters refused to retreat, police fired bullets, mostly into the air.
But in the Tseun Wan neighborhood, near Hong Kong’s border with the Chinese mainland, a police officer shot an 18-year-old in the left shoulder during a melee.
Video footage showed that before the shooting, a protester had been among a large group of people who tackled a police officer to the ground and beat him with what looked like metal pipes. That protester then turned to a second officer, who was backed against a shuttered storefront with his gun drawn. The officer fired at close range, after the protester appeared to have hit him.
Xi has never mentioned the tumult in the territory. And for months, he seemed to have decided to leave it to Hong Kong authorities to handle.
The question now, with the holiday having passed, is whether Xi’s calculus will change. China is already facing myriad challenges — from the trade war with the United States to economic pressures that are slowing growth to the lowest level in years — that could make authorities in Beijing lose patience with the defiance in Hong Kong.
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