Xi's bullying has backfired so far but there's a good reason why he's trying again by Peter Hartcher

It doesn't seem to make much sense. China's President Xi Jinping tried to get tough with Hong Kong and Taiwan last year. The people in both places responded emphatically. They stood up to his bullying. They rejected his efforts to push them around.

The only thing Xi achieved was to alienate the smartest and freest Chinese populations within Beijing's claimed sphere. Many ordinary middle-class people were so incensed that they turned out to vote and to protest for the first time.

Xi's response? His regime has now made new threats against both Taiwan and Hong Kong. And formalised them in the executive's annual work report to the National People's Congress over the past few days.

"It's sad to hear," says the veteran Hong Kong-based political analyst Willy Lam, "a nation going down the wrong path". It also seems bizarre that Xi should want to persist on such a losing course.

When Beijing tried to force an extradition treaty onto Hong Kong last year, millions of Hong Kongers protested under slogans that were once considered fringe. Chief among them: "Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our time".

And a newly energised fringe risked their lives to clash with riot police under angrier cries: "We burn, you burn with us."

A record 71 per cent of voters turned out at the district council elections in November to hand a landslide victory to the pro-democracy candidates and a stinging rebuke to Beijing's allies.

And Xi's tough-guy threats had the same effect on the 24 million people of Taiwan. By intimidating the island, he succeeded in electrifying the people to support his greatest rival – President Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.

The Chinese Communist Party imposed a political freeze on contacts. It sent its military in ever-tightening circles of manoeuvres around Taiwan last year to reinforce its toughening diplomatic campaign against the self-governing democracy. And it has used economic coercion to try to break Taiwan's will. This included cutting the flow of mainland tourists to Taiwan.

All this was supposed to persuade Taiwan to unite with Beijing under the same "one country, two systems" formula that has applied to Hong Kong since 1997. Indeed, Hong Kong was supposed to be the test case, the pilot program to prepare the way for the real prize – Taiwan. To show the government in Taipei that it could unite with Beijing yet preserve a high level of autonomy.

So Xi's crackdown on Hong Kong last year was doubly stupid. It not only alienated Hong Kongers, it also showed Taiwan that Xi couldn't be trusted to deliver on the promise of "one country, two systems".

The Chinese Communist Party's pressure campaign backfired so badly that Tsai, who might have lost her re-election bid as her approval figures sagged last year, instead surged to a decisive victory in January with an improved share of the vote. Her winning slogan: "Resist China, Defend Taiwan."
Yet in the face of this wall-to-wall disaster for Xi, he has now launched a newly intensified campaign to do exactly the same again. But more.

Beijing's announcement on Friday that it would impose a new "national security" law on Hong Kong brought protesters back onto the streets in force for the first time since the advent of COVID-19.
Hong Kong is to have no input into the law, affronting the principle of a "high degree of autonomy". Democrats are describing it as the last gasp for the city's remaining freedoms. A petition signed by more than 200 current and former parliamentarians and policymakers from 23 countries has deplored the plan. These include 23 Australian MPs and senators to date.

While that is a travesty for the people of Hong Kong, another development in Beijing signals the potential for a tragedy of historic proportions. In the same work report, the Chinese Communist Party changed the decades-old formula that it always has applied to Taiwan. In stating its goal to absorb the island into China's rule, Beijing always pledges its commitment to "peaceful reunification". Friday's work report omitted the word "peaceful".

Beijing has never renounced the possible use of force to annex Taiwan, but always has emphasised its peaceful intent. At the very least, the changed wording is an elevated piece of rhetorical intimidation against the prosperous democracy. "They figure that it's more and more difficult to achieve reunification peacefully," says Lam. He points to the surge in activity around Taiwan by the People's Liberation Army in the last few months: "So this is real intimidation of Taiwan and also rhetorical intimidation."

Any armed effort to seize Taiwan raises the prospect that the US would mobilise to defend it. Australia would have to make a choice in the event of such a war.

But if all Xi's bullying to date has backfired so badly, why would he do yet more? "The Chinese Communist Party has no ballot box legitimacy so its legitimacy rests on two pillars – economic growth and nationalism," explains Lam. "Now that economic growth is so weak, nationalism is the sole pillar of Xi's legitimacy. That's why he's he taking a very tough line on nationalism, on Hong Kong, on Taiwan, on Xinjiang, on Tibet."

Xi's commitment to a bare-knuckle assertiveness in the name of China's historic revival has roused the deep nationalism of the Chinese people. Now that he has mobilised his presidency in its name, he is like the great white shark – he cannot stop moving forward or he will die. That's the only way it makes sense.