The ‘Infinity War’ in the Streets of Hong Kong

The rise of China threatens the free world. 
By Roger Cohen

Protests continued in Hong Kong through the Christmas holiday.

HONG KONG — Carrie Lam, the lame-duck Beijing-backed ruler of Hong Kong, is unhappy that Christmas has been “ruined by a group of reckless and selfish rioters.”
Joan Shang, who works in sustainable development and has joined the pro-democracy protests, takes a different view.
“It’s an ideological war and we are at the center of it,” she said of the near-seven-month campaign. Such struggles do not take a break for Santa.
I found Hong Kong, once home to the pragmatic apolitical pursuit of money, riven and shaken.
One consultant, who thinks the city is now “a base of subversion against the Chinese central government,” told me he’d arranged for his family to stay in New York because he does not want his teenage daughters breathing the “toxic air.”
He was not referring to tear gas, but to poisonous division.
Everything from co-op meetings to dinner conversation is charged with the tension between the “yellow” protesters’ camp and the “blue” Beijing bloc.
Dialogue is near nonexistent.
The yellow-blue ideological struggle pits Hong Kong’s rule of law against China’s “rule by law,” free societies against Xi Jinping’s intensifying surveillance-state autocracy.

Persistent Hong Kong protests threaten Xi Jinping’s authoritarian project.

The confrontation will not end soon.
To say the course of the 21st century hinges on this conflict’s outcome would be a stretch, but not an outlandish one. 
“This is the infinity war,” Joshua Wong, a prominent democracy activist, told me.
“When Xi says the ‘motherland,’ it leaves me flat,” Shang said over coffee.
“I have no ties to that country. We in Hong Kong are not an authoritarian society. Psychologically, China cannot understand young people prepared to hurt their own interests for democracy. To them it’s all about money.”
Newly acquired wealth and rapid development have been the glue of Chinese society in recent decades. 
Xi — concentrating power, abolishing term limits, extending technological tyranny — has left no doubt over his determination to prolong that cohesion through diktat.
The history of China has been marked by periods of unity followed by fracture.
Xi wants to put an end to that alternation.
His ruthless assertiveness has conjured that impossible thing: overwhelming bipartisan American congressional backing for a piece of legislation. 
Such was the support for the bill last month that authorizes sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials responsible for human rights abuses in the city.
President Trump signed the bill reluctantly, but he signed.
China was furious.
The persistent Hong Kong protests threaten Xi’s authoritarian project.
The Chinese periphery looks frayed.
Taiwan, on the eve of elections next month, has taken note of the troubles in Hong Kong.
Unification on the basis of the chimera of “one country, two systems”?
No, thank you.
China has its red lines, and Hong Kong is treading close to them.
But the city is a special case; it’s dollars and oxygen.
Hong Kong affords mainland tycoons the ability to move “red capital” in and out. 
The city, the world’s third-largest financial center, provides access to international capital markets.
It even offers honest courts and judges.
And so China is likely to play a waiting game.
A second Tiananmen in Hong Kong would be a horrific gamble that perhaps only armed insurrection or an outright push for independence would provoke.
Gradual infiltration of the increasingly brutal Hong Kong police by mainland paramilitaries is an obvious alternative. 
But it’s not a solution.
Beijing’s dilemma is that “one country, two systems,” always an exercise in creative ambiguity, is broken.
The model, agreed upon for the British handover of sovereignty to China in 1997 and supposed to last until 2047, is now almost halfway through its putative life.
The limits of its internal contradictions have been reached.
It would have been one thing if China had moved in the liberal direction many expected; it’s quite another when Xi’s rule grows ever more repressive and an estimated one million Muslim Uighurs in China’s East Turkestan colony undergo Orwellian re-education in camps.
“The problem is the idea of a half-century of no change begins to feel like handcuffs,” Teresa Ma, a Hong Kong lawyer and mediator, told me.
“Our society has evolved, but our government is utterly unresponsive.”
Hong Kong’s restiveness has many roots: rising inequality, unaffordable housing, diminishing prospects for young people, dithering governance, a sense of marginalization as China rose.
The city represents 2.7 percent of Chinese gross domestic product today, compared with 18.4 percent in 1997.
Shenzhen, just over the border, was a cow town three decades ago; now it glistens and gleams, a high-tech hub.
Freedom versus repression is not the whole story of the protests.
Many frustrations have found an outlet in demonstrations that have turned violent at times.
But it is the essence of the story.
Only the tone-deaf insensitivity of Lam, the city’s chief executive, pushed Hong Kongers into open revolt in June.
Her administration’s proposal for an extradition bill would have meant game over for Hong Kong.
 This city knows as no other that the rule of law and an independent judiciary are the basis of its prosperity. 
Allowing "criminal" suspects to be sent into the one-party lawlessness of mainland China would have nixed that. 
“The spirit of the rule of law is in the blood of the Hong Kong people,” Benny Tai, an associate law professor at the University of Hong Kong, told me.
That’s why millions poured into the streets.
The bill was withdrawn, but too late.
Pandora’s box had been opened.
The genie that emerged was called freedom.
Lam, according to an audio tape obtained by Reuters, has conceded that the bill was “very unwise.” Her life, she said, “has been turned upside down.”
She’s paralyzed.
But she can’t quit.
The last thing Xi wants is a precedent for massive street protests leading to the ouster of a leader.
The protesters have five demands, including an independent investigation of police brutality and an amnesty for the thousands arrested. 
But the most intractable is insistence on the election of the chief executive through universal suffrage — in other words, real Hong Kong democracy.
The Basic Law of 1997 calls for “universal suffrage” as an “ultimate aim,” but in “accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress,” and “upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.”
Creative ambiguity, I said, otherwise known as an impenetrable verbal fudge.
This convoluted language worthy of a Soviet bureaucrat is fast withering into irrelevance. 
Lam was chosen by a 1,200-member election committee dominated by pro-Beijing factions.
That sure worked out well!
Wong, the 23-year-old democracy activist, put it bluntly: “The fundamental problem is that, from Beijing’s perspective, universal suffrage is not far from independence.”
Regina Ip, a Hong Kong legislator and a former secretary for security, thinks the fundamental problem lies elsewhere — in the maximalist demands of the protesters.
China, she told me, agreed to a “more democratic form of government in Hong Kong,” but “not a democracy as available to an independent political entity.”
The protests had morphed into “a serious attempt to overthrow the government and split Hong Kong from China.”
I don’t think the issue is independence.
The protests, largely leaderless, coordinated through social media, ranging from flash mobs in malls to massive marches, are the furious response of a frustrated population to Xi’s ominous repressive turn and Lam’s subservience to it.
Hong Kong’s culture has changed. Once intensely pragmatic, it is now intensely values-driven. 
That could happen one day on the mainland, too.
Millennials value values.
District council elections last month, in which democracy advocates took 87 percent of the seats, suggest where Hong Kong public opinion lies.
Impatience and irritation at the disruption of the protests in a business-driven city have grown, but are far from predominant.
Legislative elections next September are likely to reinforce the pro-democracy trend.
Tai, the law professor, was unsure whether to give me his card because the University of Hong Kong is trying to oust him over his role in the 2014 political protests and could succeed soon.
He spent a few months in prison this year after being convicted on public nuisance charges.
He is now out on bail.

Protesters in Hong Kong on Christmas Eve.

“Our fight for our rights will not end,” he told me.
“The rise of China is a threat to the free world and that is what Hong Kong is resisting.” 
The city is the avant-garde of a world awakening, with a mixture of anxiety and dismay, to the full implications of Chinese ascendancy.
The most significant, perhaps the only, foreign policy achievement of the Trump administration has been to get behind the Hong Kong protesters while pressuring Xi on trade and keeping channels open to the Chinese leader. 
This American pressure, which has made Trump popular in Hong Kong, must not relent.
Mike Bloomberg, who has said Xi “is not a dictator,” and Joe Biden, who has said China “is not competition for us,” should take another look.
Universal suffrage for Hong Kong is the only endgame I can see to the “one country, two systems” impasse, short of the People’s Liberation Army marching into the city and all hell breaking loose.

Desinicization: Revolution of our Times

Hong Kong's summer of discontent is now longer than 2014's Umbrella Movement ... and isn't over yet
By James Griffiths

Hong Kong -- No one predicted this.
When the final protesters were cleared from Hong Kong's streets after 79 days of pro-democracy protests in 2014 -- many of them forcibly carried off by police -- they promised they'd be back.
For years this seemed like a pipe dream.
The Umbrella Movement, so-named in reference to the umbrellas used by protesters in defense of police pepper spray, changed Hong Kong forever.
The movement awoke a whole generation of new activists and politicians, some of whom would go on to be elected to the city's legislature, but in many ways it felt like a failed last stand, with everything that came after it seeming more like a desperate rear guard action against ever-increasing Chinese influence and control over the semi-autonomous city.
Protest leaders who were elected were expelled from office on dubious grounds, and many others were arrested and jailed for their part in the unrest.
Demonstrations and marches never attracted the numbers seen in 2014, and it seemed like the pro-democracy movement was on life support.
Now, four years, eight months and 12 days after the Umbrella Movement ended, ongoing protests have surpassed it in duration and massively overtaken it in terms of disruption and political turmoil -- and they show no signs of stopping.
The roots of the current unrest can be traced back to that summer five years ago, both in the radicalizing effect it had on a whole generation of young Hong Kongers and in the government's failure to do anything.
With the collapse of the protest movement in December 2014, a lid was placed on the disruption, leaving the underlying frustrations boiling and ready to explode.



The political roots of the current unrest
The current protests -- they don't have an agreed upon name but the snappiest is the "Hard Hat Revolution" for the yellow helmets many protesters wear to protect against police weapons -- began on June 9, when organizers say more than a million people attended a protest march calling for the withdrawal of an extradition bill with China.
The bill was eventually suspended following violent clashes between protesters and police outside the city's legislature on June 12 and an even bigger march the following weekend, which saw the largest ever turnout at a protest in Hong Kong's history -- but for many the suspension was too little too late.
As the protests enter their twelfth week, overtaking the Umbrella Movement in duration, the complete withdrawal of the bill remains a key priority, but protesters have also expanded their demands to include the driving issue of the 2014 protests: Genuine universal suffrage in how the city picks its leader.
When Hong Kong was handed over from British to Chinese control in 1997, it switched from having a London-picked governor to a local Chief Executive, selected by an "election committee" and officially appointed by Beijing.
Per the Hong Kong constitution, the ultimate aim is for the city's leader to be elected "by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures" and the election of all members of the legislature -- which is currently about 50% democratically elected -- "by universal suffrage."

Hong Kong protesters promised to return after the last Umbrella Movement activists left the streets in December 2014.

In the more than two decades since 1997, reform has been slow coming.
Carrie Lam, the current chief executive, is the fourth person to hold that office, none of whom were elected by universal suffrage.
In 2007, China's top lawmaking body agreed that the contest which eventually resulted in her appointment "may be implemented by the method of universal suffrage; that after the Chief Executive is selected by universal suffrage, the election of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region may be implemented by the method of electing all the members by universal suffrage."
Seven years later, however, China's leaders ruled out full universal suffrage, saying that candidates could be elected by the public -- but only after they had been approved by a Beijing-dominated nomination committee.
Most democratic activists and lawmakers rejected the deal as a sham and it was eventually defeated in the city's legislature after a botched walkout by pro-government legislators.
In the interim, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers occupied parts of the city for 79-days, demanding Beijing withdraw its decision and allow the chief executive to be elected by "genuine universal suffrage."
After the use of tear gas in the early hours of the protests backfired spectacularly, bringing more people to the streets, authorities took a largely hands-off approach, and the Umbrella Movement had gradually fizzled out by the time police cleared the last dedicated protesters in December 2014.

While the movement did not achieve its main goals, the influence of the protests was massive. Legislative elections in 2016 returned the youngest, most politically radical parliament the city had ever seen -- though several lawmakers were later ejected from office -- and the protests are also widely credited with hastening the end of former Chief Executive CY Leung's career.
Lam, Leung's former deputy and now successor, refused to consider restarting political reform after she took office in 2017, choosing instead to focus on livelihood and economic issues.
This wasn't necessarily a bad idea.
Hong Kong is one of the most unequal cities in the world; housing prices and living costs rise each year, while youth employment rates have been largely stagnant and many young graduates struggle to find work.
Inequality is linked to the desire for greater democracy, which is driven in large part by an understanding that the city's leader and legislature -- where around 50% of seats are appointed by industry bodies and other non-democratic groupings -- are more responsive to the whims of Beijing and local elites than they are to the wider public.
"The government should take from the rich and give to the poor so they can live in Hong Kong, too," Tse Lai-nam, a 26-year-old who has taken part in the recent protests, told CNN this month.
"The government has never done anything to promote social mobility, instead it has increased wealth disparity and made it more difficult for young people to buy an apartment."
Lam's proposals to remedy these issues have largely fallen flat.
Her most ambitious plan, to build a 17 square kilometer (6.5 square mile) cluster of artificial islands off Lantau at a cost of around $80 billion, has faced criticism and protests from local residents, environmentalists and opposition lawmakers.
In particular, many point out that it does not address immediate concerns, with the first group of houses built on the islands not expected to be available until at least 2032.
Other proposals to relieve the pressure on poorer Hong Kongers have fallen equally flat.
Lam also attracted outrage -- and renewed criticism for being out of touch -- when she defended plans to raise the age limit for elderly welfare payments by saying "I am over 60-years-old but I still work for over 10 hours every day."
Less than 50% of over-60s in the city are employed.
Lam makes around $635,000 a year and does not pay for her own housing.
Hong Kong is no way strapped for cash, it has some $1.12 trillion in reserves, and has posted budget surpluses every year for the last decade.
But this has largely not translated into the type of big ticket livelihood reforms and improvements Lam promised on taking office.
Instead her administration has chosen to give cash handouts -- $510 last year for around 2.8 million people -- that while appreciated by their recipients, did little to address the underlying issues.
Protesters changed their tactics, officials are stuck in the past
In retrospect, a storm was clearly brewing.
While Lam has so far failed to alleviate Hong Kong's yawning inequality, she has also continued her predecessor's policy of cracking down on Umbrella Movement leaders and moving closer to China.
A controversial bill giving mainland Chinese authorities joint control over the city's new high-speed rail terminus, raised significant alarm, as did plans to adopt a Chinese law banning insult of the Chinese national anthem and flag.
Multiple Umbrella leaders, including Joshua Wong and Benny Tai, were imprisoned under Lam's administration, and some more radical pro-democracy activists were barred from standing for election.
On the other side of the border, the situation continued to worsen, as Chinese dictator Xi Jinping secured power for life and cracked down on dissent.
In the far-western colony of East Turkestan, millions of Muslims have been detained in "re-education" camps, and numerous activists have been jailed or disappeared.
All of this tension and anger was a tinder box waiting to be lit by the extradition law.
When the government failed to respond to a huge protest march on June 9 and pressed ahead with a second-reading of the bill days later, it exploded.
Attempts by Lam to get the genie back in the bottle have proven unsuccessful, as the protests have outpaced her.
Unlike the government, protesters have learned from 2014. 
Rather than an exhausting, drawn-out occupation requiring people to camp out in the streets for weeks, making them vulnerable to police, counter-protesters and Hong Kong's often miserable weather, they have instead adopted Bruce Lee's slogan "be water."
A variety of protests, marches and strikes have taken place in the past months, evolving with the police and government response and impacting neighborhoods some of which had never seen a major protest before.
"If this was an occupation on the streets every day it wouldn't have lasted anywhere near this long," Wong told CNN this week.
Another key change has been in the leaderless nature of the protests.
While this has its issues -- most notably an inability to deescalate in violent or out-of-control situations -- it has left the authorities without obvious targets for arrest.
Some have argued that this also means there is no one for the government to negotiate with, but as Wong and others have pointed out, of five student leaders who met with Lam and other top officials in 2014, three were later jailed.
Following a rare tear gas free weekend earlier this month, Lam gestured towards future reconciliation, saying she would launch an "important fact-finding study" into the causes of the protest.
"I hope that this is a very responsible response to the aspirations for better understanding of what has taken place in Hong Kong," she said.
"And most important of all, it is not just fact finding to provide the sequence of facts. It also will provide the Government with recommendations on how to move forward and also to avoid the recurrence of similar incidents."
For many Hong Kongers, the problems the city suffers were clear before the 2014 protests brought them to the attention of the world, and were even clearer afterward.
That Lam's government still does not apparently understand, or have any plan to address them, could mean the current unrest continues another 79 days.

30 Years After Tiananmen: Hong Kong Remembers

An organizer of the 2014 Occupy Central protest explains how Hong Kong keeps the spirit of Chinese democracy alive.

By Benny Tai

On January 16, 2013, I published an article in the daily Hong Kong Economic Journal arguing that if Hong Kong people wanted democracy, they should make civil disobedience their means to this end. Mass rallies alone, I wrote, could never overcome the obstacles that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had put in the path of democratic reform. 

My idea quickly drew wide attention.
In March 2013, I joined Chan Kin-man, a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Chu Yiu-ming, a retired Baptist pastor, in initiating the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) Movement. 

The media called us the “Occupy trio.” 

For many years, Chan worked to establish and support civil society groups in mainland China. 

Chu, a veteran social activist, was also one of the key organizers of Operation Yellowbird, which had helped many student leaders and other Tiananmen Square protesters to escape from China to Western countries via Hong Kong. 

The three of us had seen how the Tiananmen Massacre happened. 

The souls of Tiananmen Square have remained in our hearts, and never far from our thoughts.
In hundreds of public gatherings, the Occupy Central movement highlighted the meaning and importance of universal suffrage. 

Three rounds of deliberative meetings and a civil referendum in which around 800,000 people voted were our means for framing a proposal to the CCP regarding methods of electing the Hong Kong chief executive. 

On August 31, 2014, China’s national legislature rejected Occupy Central’s proposal. 

We then set in motion our plan to take things to the streets.

In late September, high school and college students walked out of their classes and headed for Civic Square, in the area of Central that houses the Hong Kong government offices. 

The police blocked off the area adjacent to the government headquarters, causing thousands of protesters to spill into major roads nearby. 

The police used tear gas in an effort to disperse the protesters, but this only brought even more people to join the demonstrations.
The protesters maintained their peaceful occupation. 

Haunted by the nightmare of the Tiananmen Massacre, my two colleagues and I just wanted to bring everyone home safely. 

Many protesters, however, had come out on their own rather than in response to the organized Occupy Central movement, and they saw no duty to follow any Occupy Central directions. 

The students refused to retreat without making any gains for democracy, and the protesters continued to occupy the roads. 

This went on for days, and the inconvenience it caused began to eat away at public support. Many protesters still refused to leave. 

In the end, we surrendered ourselves to the police, and after 79 days of occupation, the streets were finally cleared.
The Umbrella Movement of 2014, as this campaign of planned and unplanned protests came to be called, did not meet the tragic fate that the Tiananmen Square protests had suffered in 1989. 

The Umbrella Movement failed to change the electoral system of Hong Kong, but it reshaped the political culture. 

People are now much more receptive to civil disobedience as a tool of democratization, and seeds of democracy have been planted in Hong Kong’s soil.
Here, however, a word of caution is in order. 

Whereas older Hong Kong democrats tend to see hopes for democracy in Hong Kong as tied to hopes for democracy in China, many younger Hong Kong people reject the linkage. 

They favor self-determination or even full independence for Hong Kong, and may care little whether China ever becomes democratic. 

Yet feelings cannot override political reality. 

If democracy gains no ground in China, the chance that Hong Kong can become democratic will be slim.
The souls of Tiananmen Square might not be remembered by many in mainland China, but they have not left Hong Kong. 

By virtue of its persistence, Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy may have preserved the seeds of change in China. 

If so, this would not be the first time that Hong Kong has played such a role in Chinese history.
The CCP seems powerful at the moment, but China is at a crossroads. 

The kinds of cultural changes seen in Hong Kong may be coming to China before long. 

When the generation that grew up amid unprecedented economic and physical security becomes the pillar of society, the demand for greater political freedom and more self-rule may become unstoppable. 

When a substantial number of people in China demand democratic change, it will be a moment of great opportunity for Hong Kong’s democracy movement as well. 

We must do everything we can now to prepare ourselves so we are ready to rise to the challenge of that moment when it arrives.

Hong Kong democracy activists charged day after new city leader selected

Nine activists to be prosecuted for street protests two years ago despite new chief executive Carrie Lam pledging her selection would reunite population
By Benjamin Haas In Hong Kong

Hong Kong police have started a crackdown on pro-democracy lawmakers and activists, informing at least nine people they will be charged for their involvement in a series of street protests more than two years ago.
The charges come a day after the Carrie Lam was selected to be the city’s chief executive. 

She was heavily backed by the Chinese government and promised to heal divisions in an increasingly polarised political climate where pro-Beijing elites and businesses have repeatedly clashed with grassroots movements calling for more democracy.
For nearly three months in 2014, protesters surrounded the main government offices and blocked roads in the heart of Hong Kong’s financial district. 

While several high-profile cases were brought in the months after, the vast majority of protesters were not charged.
But on Monday the government announced it would prosecute two lawmakers, Tanya Chan and Shiu Ka-chun. 

The others are former student protest leaders Eason Chung and Tommy Cheung, as well as the founders of the Occupy Central movement, Benny Tai, Reverend Chu Yiu-ming and Chan Kin-man. 

Activist Raphael Wong and former legislator Lee Wing-tat will also be charged.
“This isn’t just my case being prosecuted, it’s prosecution against Hong Kong’s democracy,” Chan said in an interview. 

“Lam said her first job would be to reunite Hong Kong people and this will make that task much more difficult.”
Some of the nine planned to turn themselves in at police headquarters late on Monday, with activists rallying around them in support.
Current chief executive Leung Chun-ying has taken unprecedented steps in recent months to remove pro-democracy lawmakers from office. 

Two were barred from taking their seats last year, and the government has launched legal challenges against four other legislators.
If Chan or Shiu are jailed for more than a month, they could lose their seats in the legislative council. The two will be charged with creating a public nuisance, which carries a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment.
“Leung is trying to change the result of the legislative election through the courts,” Chan said.

“This is a well planned and well designed action, the timing is very critical.”
Lam said she did not know about the arrests in advance.
“I made it very clear that I want to unite society and bridge the divide that has been causing us concern,” Lam said at a press conference. 

“But all these actions should not compromise the rule of law in Hong Kong.”
The protests that led to the charges were sparked by the Chinese government’s decision to vet candidates for the chief executive. 

Beijing’s reform package was voted down, and only 1,194 or 0.03% of registered voters could cast a ballot in Sunday’s election.
Lam met with student leaders of the pro-democracy protests in 2014, and ended up taking a hard line against concessions on the political reform offered by Beijing.
It is unclear why the government waited more than two years to prosecute the protesters and the police did not responded to multiple requests seeking comment.

Sick Men of Asia: Chinese Paranoia

Chinese Propaganda Video Warns of West’s ‘Devilish Claws’
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

Joshua Wong, a student leader, delivering a speech in 2014 during protests in Hong Kong calling for greater democracy. A video spreading widely online in China depicts the city as a base for Western subversion, whipped up by figures like Mr. Wong.

BEIJING — The ominous images in the video pile up, set to darkly urgent music.
Refugees fleeing failed uprisings in the Middle East.
Western diplomats and politicians cast as puppet masters of subversion in China.
Chinese lawyers abjectly confessing to subversion in show trials.
Protests erupting in Hong Kong.
“ ‘Color revolution’ has already succeeded in pushing many countries into the flames of war and schism, and its devilish claws are reaching into China,” one of the subtitles in the video reads.
It goes on to say: “Embassies in China are at the forward command, combining forces to promote ‘street politics.’ ”

The video, which spread on the internet this week, has been widely promoted online by public security offices that oversee the police, including an office of the central Ministry of Public Security. But who ordered its production is unclear.
An earlier version surfaced online in August but disappeared from the internet, only to resurface in its current version.
Attempts to contact the makers, whose working name, Gewuzhijian, appears at the end of the video and also on Weibo, a Chinese social media service, went unanswered.
The video is a seven-and-a-half-minute phantasmagoria of the Communist Party’s nightmares of Western subversion. 
The video does not have an official title, but it has been promoted online under the question “Who most wants to overthrow China?”
“Color revolution” is the party’s thumbnail term for these fears, and the video, while shoddily made, offers a vivid lesson in how threats to party control — real or imagined — that can seem unrelated to outsiders are often seen inside the party as calculated moves in a grand plot, orchestrated from Washington, to bring it down.
The term “color revolution” first gained currency in China to describe antigovernment insurrections in former Soviet bloc countries, which Chinese officials have said were coups inspired by the United States.
The party says such uprisings are a template of Western plans for China.
This conspiratorial worldview is more than bombast.
It is a longstanding theme that has gained greater official credence under Xi Jinping.
That perspective has threaded through the trials of Chinese lawyers and rights advocates convicted and sentenced on subversion charges this year.
It was echoed in a meeting this month about strengthening ideological controls in Chinese universities.
A law governing foreign nongovernment organizations that takes effect on Jan. 1 was also partly motivated by fears of foreign subversion.
“The first option for hostile forces infiltrating us is our education system,” the Chinese minister of education, Chen Baosheng, said in remarks published this month.
“To wreck your future, first of all they wreck your schools.”
China has been exposed to the world through trade, travel and the internet, and its citizens are in many ways increasingly sophisticated.
Even so, party propaganda remains deeply bound to the view that China faces not just disparate critics and foes, but a closely meshed conspiracy that unites those forces.
The video is an especially feverish dose of that worldview.
It says plotters and subversives are “stirring up mass incidents and using social tensions as a point to break through and serve as the fuse for ‘color revolution.’ ”
They are, the video says, “using foreign nongovernmental organizations to nurture ‘proxies’ and to establish a social basis for ‘color revolution.’ ”
Hong Kong, in particular, is depicted as a bridgehead for Western subversion in China.
The pro-democracy law professor Benny Tai, the media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, the student leader Joshua Wong and others are lined up as among those “making Hong Kong into a base for ‘color revolution.’”
The video also refers briefly to booksellers from Hong Kong who were abducted and taken to mainland China last year, prompting an outcry in Hong Kong, which is supposed to have substantial legal autonomy as a self-administered Chinese territory.
The video says the booksellers, who specialized in lurid and wildly imaginative accounts of China’s political elite, had “traduced the images” of party leaders.
Under Xi, who assumed power four years ago, such videos have become an important part in the party’s propaganda arsenal. 
“Silent Contest,” produced by China’s National Defense University and issued in 2014, was even more breathless in its depiction of Western threats.

But the new video ends on a reassuring note.
The dark images and language give way to swelling melodies and images of a bright dawn over the Great Wall.
There are pictures of smiling people and of muscular People’s Liberation Army troops.
“Thoroughly expelling ‘color revolution’ from China will be a long war,” the video warns.
But at the end it declares, “If there is war, we will answer the call.”