The New Yorker Radio Hour - New Yorker Writers on Hong Kong, and Nixon After Tiananmen Square

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

The months of protests in Hong Kong may be the biggest political crisis facing Chinese leadership since the Tiananmen Square massacre a generation ago. What began as objections to a proposed extradition law has morphed into a broad-based protest movement. “There was just this rising panic that Hong Kong was becoming just like another mainland city, utterly under the thumb of the Party,” says Jiayang Fan, who recently returned from Hong Kong. In Beijing, Evan Osnos spoke to officials during their celebration of the Chinese Communist Party’s seventieth year in power. He found that the leadership is feeling more secure than it did in 1989, when tanks mowed down student protesters. “I think the more likely scenario,” Osnos tells David Remnick, “is that China will keep up the pressure and gradually use its sheer weight and persistence to try to grind down the resistance of protestors.” And, from the archives, reflections from Richard Nixon on the fallout from Tiananmen Square.   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Donald Trump has made China one of the defining issues of his presidency. He seems to have done everything he can to provoke China. He's ignited a trade war. He's escalated tensions over North Korea, and much more. And yet instead of backing the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, Trump has reportedly told President Xi Jinping that the United States would remain silent about democracy as they worked out their trade deal. The protests in Hong Kong against Beijing's rule have been going on now for months. Combined with slowing economic growth across the country, they've created a political crisis for Xi Jinping right at a time when the Communist Party

is supposed to be celebrating its 70th year in power. The situation is more serious than anything since the Tiananmen Square uprising a generation ago. Two of our staff writers are recently back from China, Evan Osnos and Jayong Fan. Zhang, you just got back from Hong Kong, and I want to get a sense, first, the emotional tenor of what's going on in the streets. What kinds of people are participating,

and what's the feeling out there? I would say 80% of the participants are middle class, working class. they range in age from probably 20 to 75. The folks I spoke to feel just so strongly that they are there to support the freedom that they have understood to be part and parcel of Hong Kong society. I think many of them are undecided about how far they're willing to go. And most of them would claim they're not what's known as front-line protesters. What is a front-line protester mean?

A frontline protester is the ones that have been featured so prominently in Western media, the ones wearing the gas masks, clad in all black. They occasionally throw the Molotov cocktails and resort to more extreme measures. I think it's really important to point out that that's a pretty minor fraction of the overall community of protesters. Now, my understanding is that this began with fairly limited demands. It had to do with extradition, for example. And with time, that has broadened. And do these protesters have the sense that they can keep apart from Beijing indefinitely?

When I pose that question to protesters, many of them don't have a very clearly defined answer. And I would dare to say that many of them probably don't even know themselves. What they do feel is the anger. that comes from the failure of the umbrella movement, which happened in 2014 over this fight for universal suffrage that did not succeed. And this accumulated sense of anger and grievances that have not properly been met in any way. It's important to say that Hong Kong was never a democracy, even under Britain, but they felt that this was the direction.

in which they were moving. So there was just this rising panic that Hong Kong was becoming like another mainland city utterly under the thumb of the Communist Party. So real fear of being sucked in. Exactly. So while Zhang was in Hong Kong,

Evan, on the front lines and dodging all the top cocktails, and the rest. You were in Beijing for the 70th anniversary of the revolution. How were the Chinese officials that you were talking to talking about Hong Kong and how was the Hong Kong drama playing out on the Chinese media?

Well, the contrast really couldn't be more stark. In Beijing, the subject of Hong Kong and its protests has nothing to do with idealism or with young people who are trying to create economic opportunities for themselves or to hold off Beijing's control. It is described in Beijing consistently as a, quote, separatist movement. They think of it. And, you know, it as an attempt to try to divide Chinese territory, which after all is this very visceral, very specific accusation because any Chinese person will tell you that the country over the course of history has been invaded and has been carved up. And so by talking about it as an assault on Chinese territory, that's tapping into a very deep political well. And they were doing

that to a great extent recently because, after all, they're celebrating 70 years of the People's Republic of China. And one of the ways that's. that they're doing that is by saying we have been able to pull together the country in ways that previous governments never had. And that means resisting things like these protests in Hong Kong. And how has Xi Jinping handled the protests? Do you expect that the crackdown will become more violent, more stringent than it's already been? Well, I would not expect that they're going to give in to the protesters' demands. frankly, there was just no indication in Beijing and anybody that I've been talking to involved in the sort of strategy about this subject thinks that China is ready to make a deal with Hong Kong.

But the obvious fear, the thing that people have been worried about is some sort of repeat of the events of 1989 when China cracked down on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square and you had a massacre in which students and other people in the city were killed. But at the same time, there are very real pressures. I think that are on Xi Jinping not to handle it the same way they handled it in 1989. If they went into Hong Kong today with tanks, for instance, as they did in Beijing, you know, this would devastate a financial capital that is very important to China's economy. It's got a stock market larger than London's. It's a big source of foreign currency. And more importantly, it would devastate China's effort to try to establish itself on the global stage as an alternative to American leadership. And so I think the more likely scenario is that China will keep up the pressure and gradually use its sheer weight and persistence to try to grind down the resistance of protesters in Hong Kong. Do you think that people in Hong Kong expect a Tiananmen Square type scenario to take place or do they feel that that kind of pressure is not on them, that they can go much farther?

Some of the folks I've talked to certainly think that that is a possibility. There is this sense of Shenzhen right across the border, and there being People's Liberation Army barracks there, and also an increase of troops even stationed in Hong Kong. I think there is also, among the young, this sense of nihilism, this feeling that if the tanks really do roll in, let the world see how brutal the communist regime is. And this is, I would say, again, among the 20 to even 10% of the frontline protesters who, for better or worse,

command a lot of attention because they're the ones who are, you know, some of them are talking to Western media, and they're the ones throwing the Molotov cocktails. One of the things that's most striking watching these protests is the sense of the extensive surveillance network that the Chinese government has put into play. How are the protesters able to get around that or not? You'll see in pictures that they are so fully armored in, you know, scarves, masks, covering every part of their body. I mean, and you have to imagine these are 90-degree days in Hong Kong, and they're covered head-to-to-toe, even their years. And I've been told this because there is worry or suspicion that the AI,

is so advanced that even the shape of one's ears can be monitored. And that's true? That's paranoia or true? I think AI is quite sophisticated. I'm not sure to the extent that your shapes can be monitored, but that sense of fear is warranted, I believe. There's a very telling moment when the Hong Kong protesters started to attack the smart lampposts, as they're called. These are obviously the sort of nodes of surveillance that have cameras and listening equipment and so on. And in their own way, these are the perfect expressions, the physical.

expressions of China's future governance model. It believes that in the future, it can optimize the powers of a one-party state by doing what an old analog state never could. It could never listen in on every conversation. It could never track people as they moved around a city. Well, technology allows that now. And that's one of the ways that this government imagines that it's going to try to extend its longevity. I mean, it is, after all, at a very acute moment in its own history. It's been in power 70 years. It's surpassed the longevity of the Soviet Union, but it is acutely aware that one party states do not have a long lifespan. And so Xi Jinping's personal determination is to try to, you know, in some sense, prevent the inertia of history from

coming down on top of him. Zhang, Xi Jinping has for all intents and purposes made himself president for life. I don't see it any other way. What conditions allowed him to consolidate power so swiftly and effectively. I think early on his corruption campaign, which really won the hearts and minds of the citizenry across China, was a very astute way to fight political enemies. I think when he came to power, he realized that there were still lingering factions. And one has to understand that even within the Communist Party,

there's a lot of infighting and the greatest threat to a political leader is not actually the people protesting or even, you know, the economy, but other rivaling factions trying to topple him. I think he also very deftly nursed this cult of personality. He thinks that he really is, you know, a national deity. he has convinced the people that only he can lead the country into super power status, the transition really from the century of shame that China has experienced, at least in the Chinese narrative at the hands of foreign powers to a nation that will ultimately outdo the United States. Well, journalists are known, of course, as great mind readers. So I'll let you exercise that capacity here. How does Xi Jinping see a figure like Donald Trump?

Take the two of them, put him side by side for a minute. Siegeng began his career in the very center of party power. Grew up in Beijing. His father was a senior party leader. Sieg Jinping spent his entire career essentially moving up the ladder of obscure party posts until eventually, you know, at one point he was the head of the feed associate. in a rural province. He makes his way up, becomes governor of provinces, and then finally gets his chance by keeping his mouth closed. He never let on to his peers what he believed, never created

a lot of enemies in the system, and using that method, he made his way to the top. Now look at Donald Trump. They are in every conceivable, stylistic, and personal way different. And I think Xi Jinping looks across the table at Donald Trump and finds him utterly mystifying. One of the things that's happened over the last two years is that everything that Chinese diplomats and politicians had come to believe about how American politics works has been chucked out the window. And so Xi Jinping has no trust in what Donald Trump tells him. He doesn't trust him on the trade war. He doesn't trust him on these assurances of one thing or another.

And so he's coming from a position of total and complete self-protection first and do not rely on the United States for anything. It was so interesting to me. I was watching on television some of these protests, and you see occasionally an American flag being waived or a British flag being waved. And at the same time, President Trump has been absolutely silent about these protests. He's not said one word of encouragement or praise or pro-democratic sentiment. Zhang, how is that being received on the streets of Hong Kong? I asked one of the protesters who was wielding.

the American flag, I asked what her intention was. And she said, in this war, there is no one who's powerful enough to save Hong Kong except possibly the U.S. And we need to make sure the U.S. knows how exactly critical the situation is here. And then I followed up with a question about Trump and what she thought of Trump's response. And she said, I can't get bogged down the details right now. All I need is for some of the politicians in Washington to see. But truly, they're aware that this is a president who does not press human rights issues on the Chinese leadership, has not mentioned democratic values to the Chinese leadership. if anything, his greatest emphasis lately is besides trade, which is a big issue, is to get the Chinese, as with other countries, to investigate the Biden family.

Which is why I think some of the pro-Beijing folks that I spoke to was really, it's really encouraged, frankly, that Trump won the election instead of Hillary and the sense that this is not a concern for Washington. And that at the end of the day, Trump is only interested in making a deal. And human rights was never high on his agenda. So when push comes to shove, especially with the trade war, the fact that Trump might be looking for leverage or for kind of pawns, that Hong Kong just might be one of the cards that he has to play. I think many of the pro-Baging folks that I talk to are fairly happy that that. Trump is in command right now. Just recently, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, said China will never interfere in the internal affairs of the United States, and we trust that the American people are capable of

sorting out their own problems. In this context, I know ask you both, does that mean that they're likely to take a pass on investigating the Bidens or interfering in the 2020 elections? I think, yeah, they do not particularly want to get involved here. I think this is one in which I will take them at face value. And I'll give you one day of point. Why does that make them different from the Russians? The Russians seem to love to thrive on the idea of chaos in American public life as a result of, or at least partly as a result of their interference in the election and by extension, Trump's victory. Why would the Chinese not feel the same way? Chinese thrive on something else? Well, China loves the fact that the United States is engaged in these

kinds of, you know, obviously paralyzing internal fights. That's just been very helpful to China on the world stage. But at the same time, China is prudent about not wanting to provoke any more response than it needs to. And I'll give you a useful bit of history on this, which is that China, actually, we know this. This is not a hidden fact. China hacked into the 2008 campaign, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, but it never weaponized the information. It never used it. It never pushed it back out into the public sphere the way that Russia did. What it did is it really used it for intelligence gathering purposes. It hoovered up this stuff and held onto it for its own sense of trying to predict what was going to happen. China would be much happier to watch the United States go through its own paroxysms of political disorder than to risk the possibility of engendering some American backlash by actively intervening. Zhang and Evan, if you had to guess, who are the Chinese rooting for to win the presidential election and why? I think that Elizabeth Warren is someone that China would not want to win the election,

the sense that she is someone who seems to have convictions about human rights and someone who will not let China get away with what it does within its borders. I think is worrying. I think someone like Bernie Sanders is someone who can be more attractive because Bernie at least doesn't seem to have much interest in getting involved. Evan? In general, the Communist Party prefers Republican presidents in the United States because they're in a sense more likely to be business oriented. They're going to be pro trade and so on. But this Republican president has scrambled the circuits to such a degree in Beijing that they really don't know. And they're in some sense, they're edging towards the known quantities.

They've worked with Joe Biden as a vice president. They feel a little bit more familiar with him. He's frankly one of the only names that they really know out of this field. So they're watching it very carefully. But they are at this point totally undone by Donald Trump. And they don't really believe that he would be a reliable counterparty. Evan Osnos and Jayongfan, I know you're still suffering from Jetland coming back from China. My thanks to you.

Thanks, David. Thanks so much. Jayong Fan and Evanos, both are staff writers and you can read all their coverage of China at New Yorker.com. Now, the Turkish offensive against the Kurds in Syria has put our longtime allies in horrendous danger and casualties are mounting. On our podcast, Politics and More, Dexter Filkins joins Dorothy Wickenden to talk about the Turkish invasion and how the president's withdrawal of U.S. troops has outraged even some of his diehard supporters, including Lindsey Graham.

Dexter covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he'll explain why the power vacuum created by the United States pullout is so dangerous. That's in Politics and More, a podcast from The New Yorker. And there's more to come here on The New Yorker Radio Hour, so stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for being with us today.

I'm David Remnick. For reasons that are pretty obvious, Richard Nixon's name has been coming up all the time in the news lately, and one of the most acute portraits of the late president was an essay by Michael Corder that ran in the New Yorker in 1994.

Carta got to know Nixon pretty well during the long years after the ex-president left Washington. There is a theory that great men have large heads and prominent features. Think of Charles de Gaul in his nose. LBJ in his years, FDR and his jaw. And by this standard, if no other, Richard Nixon had reached greatness. His head was enormous. His jowls and ski-jump nose were just as cartoonists had always

portrayed them. His eyes dark and penetrating. Most striking of the of all was his voice. A deep, rumbling, basso, profundo, rather like an avalanche in the distance. Michael Corder and Nixon weren't exactly friends. Corder was his editor. He worked on the books that Nixon published with Simon and Schuster, and in 1989, he was invited to a dinner at Nixon's home in Saddle River, New Jersey. And on that night, it turned out, the former president was conducting a little shadow diplomacy of his own. something very much on our minds right now. Here's Dylan Baker, reading from Michael Cordes' account of that night

with Greg Sturr as Richard Nixon. Within a mile or so of a New Jersey commercial strip full of mini-malls and service stations, Nixon's house was tucked away as secretly as Shangri-La. Behind high, dense growths of trees and hedges, it was impossible for any casual intruder to find. rather like any number of cul-de-sacs in Bel-Air, but without palm trees. Nixon's staff had presented me with careful instructions on how to reach the house,

but it seemed a little puzzled that I was driving myself. Their puzzlement became clear as I pulled up before the entrance. A row of limousines to one side made it evident that Nixon's guests tended to be driven by chauffeurs. I had driven my silver Porsche. The courtyard was a blacktop space big enough for a good-sized motel. The security people at the door seemed uncertain what to make of the car, though whether because it was frivolous or foreign, I wasn't sure. Inside, I found most of my fellow guests milling about in the entrance hall looking suitably solemn.

I recognized Robert Abplanow, a large jovial-looking. man who had been in the limelight as a Nixon backer and personal friend during Watergate. There was the CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, an assistant secretary of state, and a former U.S. representative to NATO. There were also three Chinese gentlemen, all with the bland and scruitable faces of professional diplomats. The senior of them was Han Shu, China's departing ambassador. There were no women present. It was to be a stag dinner. Nixon appeared at the top of the stairs at exactly the moment we had been summoned for. He descended halfway, stretched out his arms just as he used to do when he was campaigning with a broad smile. Gentlemen, the good news is

the bar is open. As I was shortly to discover, drinks, in the Nixon household were not to be taken or even held lightly. They were served in immense, heavy tumblers, and every time a guest took a sip, Nixon, who had an eagle eye as a host, would attract the butler's attention. It better freshen up, Mr. Corda's drink. I ordered one of his famous dairies made with almost no sugar, the recipe for which was said to be one of his more closely guarded secrets. The breakfasts, the breakfasts. The breakfasts President claimed to make the best daquery ever, and I can report that it lived up to expectations. What I was not prepared for was the odd formality that he imposed on himself and his guests.

There was no conversation as such. One guest had just returned that day from Paris, where the Cambodian talks were going on. Nixon asked him to give us a report on the subject, which he did, at some length, while we sat and listened. When he was through, Nixon gave us his views on the subject, during which absolute silence reigned, while the butler freshened up our drinks. The three Chinese men, who were presumably accustomed to feigning interest at the interminable meetings of the Communist Party, gave these disquisitions their full, rapt attention, while most of the Americans gently slumbered, arms crossed in front of them, chins resting on their chests. What kept my attention focused was not the subject of Cambodia,

but the fact that Nixon was in the habit of referring to himself in the third person, something I had never heard anyone do before, not even members of the British royal family. When Nixon was president, he'd say, his dark eyes flickering over his guests, as if he expected one of us to challenge him? When Nixon was president and leader of the free world, as if leader of the free world were also an office to which he had been elected. Roused by the announcement that dinner was ready, we filed into the dining room,

where the first course proved to be a contribution from Mr. Abplanowp, who had branched out from manufacturer of aerosol valves for spray cans, to entrepreneur of smoked fish. While we ate our smoked tuna, smoked trout, and smoked salmon, the real purpose of the dinner became apparent. The massacre of the Chinese student protesters in Tiananmen Square had occurred only two months earlier,

and Nixon was debating whether he should continue with his plans to revisit China. The former representative and ambassador to NATO, Robert Ellsworth, brought up the key question, the peace de resistance, as it were, which was how America was reacting to Tiananmen Square and whether Nixon should go to Beijing. Hanshu and the other diplomats came to full attention at this. I could not help admiring the way Nixon had managed to get somebody else to raise the question. and the way he gave it careful scrutiny, as if it had caught him by surprise.

He nodded his brows. I believe that there is more to be gained by going than not. Some people. He frowned darkly. Some people, naysayers, parlor liberals, professional skeptics, would doubtless criticize Nixon. Nixon is used to that. It's never stopped Nixon in the past. The Chinese nodded,

Great powers cannot allow their foreign policy to be determined by the scruples or prejudices of the liberal media. A deeper nod with a hint of puzzlement from the Chinese for whom media scruples were surely not a problem. The interests and the good relations of two such powers as China and the United States are more important than Trump. transitory events. Ordinary Americans like and respect China and are not dismayed by the horror stories. He leaned close to Han Shu, who continued to eat methodically and with enthusiasm while the translator whispered in his ear. When Nixon was president and leader of the free world, we had troubles of our own in the United States. We too had so-called student riots.

protests, anarchy in the streets of Washington. When you go home, you tell your people that many of us understand. When Nixon was president and leader of the free world, he found that firmness paid. You tell them that. The Chinese smiled for the first time. Firmness had so far been a hard sell for them in the United States, even in the Bush White House,

where running over students with tanks was seen, at the very least, as poor PR for the Beijing regime. Hanshu finished what was on his plate, put his knife and forked down neatly, and raised his glass of red wine, a gift from the President of France, we had been informed, in a gesture of gratitude, not quite a toast, but by no means casual either.

He whispered something to the translator. He is grateful for the president's understanding, the translator said. He will communicate it all home. Good. We withdrew to a somber room with a huge roughstone fireplace. While my fellow guests got down to the serious business of the evening, telling old political war stories from the Nixon campaign

and drinking monster stingers, I followed Nixon, who had offered to show the diplomats around the house. Most of the rooms had a certain formal, unlived-in quality, rather like an expensive hotel suite, or more to the point, the White House. The unlived-in feeling

apparently extended to Nixon. At one point, he opened a closet door, apparently thinking that it was the door to his study, then slammed it shot hastily with a muttered oath. Sond of a bitch. Like people lost in a museum, we circled aimlessly for some time, admiring the ceremonial gifts on display

that Nixon had received from other heads of state. Lucky on the second try, he flung open the door to his study and ushered us in. This is where Nixon works. It was difficult, to imagine any work being done in this unused room. It had something of the quality of a stage set

furnished with expensive new props. There was not a paper in sight, and the desktop, like everything else in the room, was polished, spotless, and apparently brand new. This is the desk at which Nixon wrote all his books. He patted its shiny leather top, affectionately, as if it were a horse. We stood uncomfortably around the empty desk, and then Nixon told Hans Shu that he wanted him to have a souvenir of his visit,

something which would convey the American spirit. There was a man in the 40s and 50s whom Nixon had always respected as a true patriot, a man who made great sacrifices for the truth and had been martyred. That man wrote a book, one of the most important books of the 20th century, a book that every American ought to read, and not just American either. His message is universal. Nixon bent down and opened the bottom drawer of his big desk, and withdrew a copy of Whitaker Chambers' witness.

I was fascinated to see that the drawer was full of hardcover copies of Chambers' book. Had Nixon bought up the entire stock? Briefly, Nixon summed up Chambers' role in the Alger Hiss case, explaining to the three communist bureaucrats the undoing of a communist conspiracy in the United States, and the way the liberal media persecuted all those who had tried to bring the truth to light, Nixon himself not accepted. Han Shue showed every sign of agreement with this view of history,

and, after Nixon autographed a copy of witness for him, he clutched it to his bosom, as if it were the Holy Grail. We returned to the fireplace, where the atmosphere fueled with steel, Stingers was getting boisterous. Nixon, I could tell, had had enough of the Chinese by now, and they seemed to have tired of him, too. I took my leave with them. It was a testimony to Nixon's power that he could make his world,

the world of exile, seem more real than the world around him, that he could create somehow the illusion that he was still the president, that Watergate had never happened, that the bombing of Cambodia or the shooting of the Kent State students hadn't really mattered, and that Whitaker Chambers was an American hero. Nixon walked us outside to shake hands. He saw the Chinese into their waiting limo, then said good night to me.

He looked across the blacktop at my Porsche and studied it carrying it. carefully. What the hell is that? Greg Sturr as Richard Nixon and Dylan Baker, reading from Michael Cordes' essay, Nixon, mine host. It was published in The New Yorker in 1994. I'm David Remnick, and that's it for this week.

Please make sure to join us next week when we'll bring you Jane Mayer's interview of one of the most powerful people in America right now, Nancy Pelosi. Till then, have a great week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon,

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