Xi Jinping, China’s president, has sat out the protests in Hong Kong as he has those elsewhere on his turf: silently but with conviction that Beijing’s hardline policies will prevail.
Such inaction is in keeping with the Communist party’s practice of leaving local leaders to sort out their own problems – even when they arose because of policy decisions taken in Beijing – and refusing to admit any mistakes.
“They didn’t self-question 25 years ago. Do you think they will do it now? They aren’t going to budge,” says Bao Pu, a Hong Kong-based publisher and son of the highest official jailed after the Communist party crushed democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.