China's Hong Kong conundrum

As during the Tiananmen protests, China is once again faced with a choice between repression and liberalisation

I was in Beijing in April 1989, lecturing at Peking University, when many of its students were encamped in Tiananmen Square demanding political liberalisation. Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese Communist Party’s General Secretary, whom I had met a few years previously, had come out  to plead with the young demonstrators to go home, as he knew of Deng Tsiao Ping’s decision to declare martial law and order the army to clear the square. Fortunately, I had left China well before the massacre of early June. The rest is history.
 
In August 2014, attending a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society