The Daily - Inside Hong Kong’s Airport

Episode Date: August 14, 2019

Protesters have flooded Hong Kong’s airport, paralyzing operations and escalating tensions between the semiautonomous territory and Beijing. The protesters are trying to send a message to government officials — and to people in mainland China. Guest: Javier C. Hernández, a New York Times correspondent based in Beijing. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:Demonstrations led the airport, one of the world’s busiest, to suspend check-ins for two days in a row this week, causing hundreds of flight cancellations. On Wednesday, some protesters apologized for the disruption.The unrest is exposing the inherent conflict in Hong Kong’s political system since China reclaimed the territory from Britain in 1997: an effort to unite Beijing’s authoritarianism with civil liberties.Here’s a guide to what prompted the Hong Kong protests, and a look at how they have evolved.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, inside Hong Kong's airport, thousands of protesters are trying to send a message to the people of mainland China. What the people of mainland China are making of that message. It's Wednesday, August 14th. Javier Hernandez, how did you come to be at the airport in Hong Kong on Monday?

Well, I'm a Beijing correspondent for The Times, and I had been in Hong Kong for several days reporting on these protests as they reached this breaking point. So I was headed home. I had packed my bags. I had headed to the airport. And then suddenly my phone just started buzzing with alerts. And I looked down, and there were all these reports about mass chaos at the airport, about flights being cancelled, about protesters kind of taking over the terminal. So I hopped on the train and headed out there. Already on the train, you could sort of sense this intense sense of unrest.

There were protesters just filling up the cars. They're all wearing their black T-shirts, which is kind of a signature of this movement. You could sense the protest was building. Airport, doors were open on the left for Terminal 1 and on the right for Terminal 2. So I get off the train. I'm here in the main arrivals hall of the Hong Kong airport. And there's a crowd of people just sitting here. They break into cheers.

It's usually this dull place, you know, where you just see a lot of businessmen and other people lining up in the first-class lounges. But on this day, you know, you look out and you just see a sea of people. There was just no space to move at all. It was really just a sense of chaos and not knowing what might happen.

Stand with Hong Kong! Fight for. Slamming Hong Kong! Fight for freedom! Slamming Hong Kong! Fight for freedom! Slamming Hong Kong! Fight for freedom! So I walked in, you know, thinking still that I could maybe catch my flight. So I ran up to the departures hall,

and it quickly became clear that that wasn't going to be possible. There were people kind of blocking the way to the departures hall, and it quickly became clear that that wasn't going to be possible. There were people kind of blocking the way to the departures hall. People had thrown up these luggage carts to use as a barrier in some cases to stop people from getting through. I looked on the walls and there was graffiti, various slogans from the protesters. You could start to hear announcements from the airlines saying, there are no flights going, it's not safe, people should just leave.

So it felt like really that the protesters had taken over. They're taping signs to the floor, portraits of protesters and anti-police slogans. So these protesters have essentially shut down the airport. They shut it down, and very quickly. And Javier, why the airport? What's the significance of that as a location for these protesters? Well, I think it's an icon of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is such a global financial center. And in Asia in particular, Hong Kong is kind of this hub for

everything. And so they knew that if they occupied this airport, if they were successful in stopping people from passing through, they could not only attract a lot of attention in the news media, but they could also reach a lot of people who might end up passing through the airport. You can imagine people who were bleary-eyed from their long trips from New York landing suddenly in Hong Kong and coming out to this sea of protesters chanting and holding signs. And part of that increasingly is also to talk to people from China. Every day there are so many visitors from the mainland who come to Hong Kong. And this is an opportunity for these young protesters to speak directly to people in the

mainland and to counter Beijing's propaganda machine. So this is a rare opportunity for these protesters in Hong Kong to talk directly to mainland China, where a lot of information doesn't get through. That's right. And it really comes as the mainland has been trying to portray Hong Kong as a place of kind of spoiled brats in many ways. They feel like Hong Kong has benefited a lot from its association with mainland China, that China has invested in infrastructure. China has helped to build its financial system.

And so when they look at Hong Kong these days, they feel like, why are you protesting? What more could you ever want? And it really goes to this fundamental contradiction, I think, between the mainland and Hong Kong. In the mainland, the economy is central and people consider economic success to equate with happiness. In Hong Kong, I think it's much more complicated, much more like a Western society where money is obviously extremely important, but people also want a bit more than that. And so you see this kind of collision course that these two different societies are on, one that believes in stability and economic prosperity, and the other that's looking more for a voice and a seat at the table. prosperity and the other that's looking more for a voice and a seat at the table.

When you talk to these protesters, the first thing they'll tell you is, we don't want to turn into the mainland. We want to be special. We don't want courts that are controlled by the Communist Party. We don't want a press that has no ability to criticize the government. And so when you sit in the airport and kind of listen, what you're hearing really, I think, is this passionate defense of democracy. And what these Hong Kong people want the world to understand is that they are going to stand up and prevent any kind of effort by the mainland to turn Hong Kong into another Chinese city. mainland to turn Hong Kong into another Chinese city. And Javier, from what you're seeing through this admittedly limited window at the airport, are the protesters able to get through to mainland Chinese with that message? I think it's really tough for them.

And it mostly falls on deaf ears. What do the mainlanders say when you... Ask for the democracy? They have the question mark over their head. What do the mainlanders say when you ask for the democracy? They have the question mark over their head. What is democracy? Are their faces like disagree with what you say? I was talking to a young woman today. She had been staying there all day at the arrivals hall with the explicit goal of trying to get through to mainlanders. And she told me that she really felt like it wasn't successful, that people would just walk by. There was a guy who flipped her off at one point. We asked them, do you know what is democracy?

Do you have it in China? The democracy is not for sale. You can't buy it. Do you know what is democracy? You have no idea. So Chinese mainlanders are hostile to that message. They are hostile, and that's because a large part of this amazingly intense propaganda machine that exists in the mainland. The Chinese will deal with the riots in Hong Kong on their own. The U.S. does not need to suggest anything.

One thing that's caught on in the mainland is this idea that the protests are the work of America, that the CIA is backing them, that it's illegitimate, that America is just trying to meddle in China's affairs and embarrass China. And a lot of people buy that. For a lot of them, they can't really believe that people would come out to protest just out of their own interests. They believe that there must be somebody pushing them to do this and that they are just pawns in this broader geopolitical war. We'll be right back. So, Javier, why would that be a plausible story to the people in China,

this idea that the U.S. is somehow behind what's happening in Hong Kong? Well, I live in Beijing. And so there's been this surge over the past year in anti-American propaganda, this attempt to pin all of China's problems on the United States. Every time I'm in a taxi and news about America comes up on the radio, inevitably the driver will turn back to me and ask, why is America trying to hold China back? Why is America trying to stop China's rise? And a large part of that is the trade war that has broken out between the Trump administration and China. When I'm out and about talking to people, all they can say is, why now? Why would America try to do this? We're in our moment, our greatest moment.

China has come out of poverty. China is building its influence around the world. Why would America try to undermine that right now? It must be because America thinks that it's losing its status as the world, why would America try to undermine that right now? It must be because America thinks that it's losing its status as a superpower, and it's just angry about that. So in the middle of this trade war, in the middle of all this propaganda, the fact that this protest erupts in Hong Kong, if you're in mainland China, it all adds up to a sinister plot by the U.S. to undermine China's rise.

It all makes sense if you're a mainlander. It's this sense that America has led revolutions in other places, and now it's China's turn. That now it's using Hong Kong to undermine China, and who knows what else. Maybe it's plotting some kind of revolution. There's really this, I would almost call it a national campaign to drive up patriotism and specifically to defend Hong Kong against what they see as this foreign threat. And did you see evidence in the airport

that this is working? I did. Hi. I was here yesterday. I was trying to reclaim a bag that I had checked before all this chaos broke out. Where do I go? And so I went to the airline desk, and of course there were dozens and dozens of mainlanders who were also heading back to Beijing. And so we got to chatting a little bit, and these two friends from Sichuan province started

to talk to me about how they saw the protests. How do you see the situation? Because the mainland doesn't have this. The mainland doesn't have this. And they felt like nothing like this could ever happen in China. Hong Kong was unruly. And that it must be some foreign force that had tried to bring this against China as a way to destabilize the country. And so you really hear, just talking to mainlanders, they almost pull these points out from the exact same places. They speak in the same terms about

foreign influence and hostile foreign forces. And it's kind of the same message that shows the effectiveness really of the Chinese propaganda machine. And the goal is really to just create doubts about information, what can be trusted and what can't, what's real and what's not. But beyond what's happening here with Hong Kong, it sounds like the people of China may really accept the idea that democracy is not a better system

than the one that they have in the mainland. That's right. There's enormous pride in China's system, the sense that what the Communist Party has done has ensured stability and prosperity for so many Chinese. And so they're very reluctant to see or really engage with any other kind of system like democracy. For President Xi Jinping, with any other kind of system like democracy. For President Xi Jinping, he really believes in this too. I feel that he really doubts this idea that if you give more power, more voice to the people, that it will result in helping society.

He thinks it could turn into chaos, people turn on each other. And he's a guy who has spoken about the Soviet Union's collapse. And that's something that he, I think, keeps very front and center in his mind. The sense that the Soviet Union did not do enough to ensure ideological conformity. And he sees that as the root cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And he's going to make sure that that doesn't happen in China.

And he sees Hong Kong as perhaps a first step toward that unraveling. So viewed from that perspective, it's in the best interest of not just mainland China, but of Hong Kong, to get these protests under control. Right. In the party's view, it's now time for national unity, not to be undermining China's rise and speaking against the Communist Party. Inside the airport, the two camps really, I think, aren't hearing each other anymore. There's this sense that they're speaking past each other. The protesters on the one side calling for democracy,

the mainlanders coming from this propaganda perspective of thinking this is a conspiracy. And it's this symbol of these two different Chinas and a sense of the irreconcilable differences. And nobody seems to be willing to give an inch to move any closer to each other. Because how can you when it's a battle over democracy versus authoritarian communism. Essentially, those are irreconcilable. Right, and it goes back to Hong Kong's handover to China in 1997.

There was a sense that this was going to be a grand political experiment, that maybe there was a way to blend autocracy with these civil liberties. But I think what a lot of people are now thinking is, maybe we were wrong. Maybe there's not really a happy middle ground here. Maybe there is no way to compromise. So with a divide that vast, where do you think that this goes from here, Javier? Well, there's some speculation that it could get a lot worse, that Beijing would take military steps to control the protests. But many experts say that's still very unlikely. They feel that Beijing wouldn't want that kind of a reputational hit. They don't want another

Tiananmen Square incident where the world's decrying them for taking strong action against protesters. But there are a lot of other tools that China could use. Things like punishing companies that work in the mainland. And the goal here is really to put these companies in the crosshairs. And is that a powerful enough lever, do you think, to make a difference? Well, already we're seeing it's making a difference. A suspension of flight staff who joined illegal protests begins today. The Chinese government this week forced Cathay Pacific, this iconic Hong Kong airline, to prevent staffers or any employees who support or participate in these protests from doing any work related to flights to mainland China.

Shares in the firm slumped over 4% Monday. That after Beijing demanded that Cathay punish staff who attended the protests. The firm moved fast to comply. And I think what they're trying to do now is to lean on these members of the Hong Kong business community who share the value that's most important to the Communist Party, which is that economic prosperity must come above all else. fear among the business community in Hong Kong and to show them and remind them that if they want any access to the Chinese market, they want to do any business in China, they're going to have to get their employees in line. That's kind of fascinating because in some ways that's a very capitalist approach to this crisis of protests for democracy. Yeah, in many ways, China is using the tools of capitalism now and hoping that people will think about the market and not think about ideals. And for a

country that's run by the Communist Party, it represents this remarkable shift that we've seen play out over decades. China cares more about money now than in some ways it cares about its own original ideals, the communist ideals that were behind the People's Republic when it was founded. Javier, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. Many of the protesters told me that they worry that Beijing might escalate its crackdown. But they also said, so what?

They have nothing to lose. They're ready to fight this fight. And so for a lot of them, I think they're just prepared for a battle that may stretch on for months or even years. On Wednesday night, the airport protests turned violent as demonstrators attacked a man they accused of being a mainland Chinese police officer, impersonating a protester. Who are you?

I'm a terrorist. I'm a terrorist! Because it's sketch! Because they're sketch! And later took a baton from another police officer and began to beat him with it. The protesters eventually retreated after the officer pulled out his gun.

A few hours later, President Trump said on Twitter that U.S. intelligence agencies had learned that China was moving troops toward the border with Hong Kong. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. the Manhattan Correctional Center, where Jeffrey Epstein died, apparently by suicide, was reassigned and the two workers in charge of monitoring Epstein were placed on leave. The punishments were announced by the Justice Department after officials found that the jail had violated its own procedures by failing to check on Epstein for several hours and by leaving him alone without a cellmate just days after taking him off suicide watch. And the Times reports that the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

has been imprisoning and torturing hundreds of soldiers in an attempt to keep the military loyal to his government. The repressive tactics are Maduro's response to a series of attempted coups and assassinations since 2017, as Venezuela has descended into poverty, protest, and violence. The conduct violates Maduro's own pledge to end state-sponsored torture in Venezuela, which was widely used by his predecessors.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.