Xi promises "smashed bodies" - and delivers

The promise: Xi warns any effort to split China will end with 'bodies smashed and bones ground to powder'

Chinese President Xi Jinping cautioned over the weekend that any effort to split with China will result in "bodies smashed and bones ground to powder" amid ongoing unrest in Hong Kong.

The Chinese leader made the warning while visiting Nepal, the Hong Kong Free Press reported.

“Anyone who attempts to split any region from China will perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder," Xi reportedly said.

The promise fulfilled: Jimmy Sham, leader of Hong Kong democracy group Civil Human Rights Front, attacked on Mong Kok street

• Sham is smashed in the head with hammers and spanners by at least four assailants who then flee in a car
• The activist’s pro-democracy group has been responsible for some of Hong Kong’s biggest protest marches in recent years

The leader of a pro-democracy group responsible for some of the largest peaceful protest marches in Hong Kong was attacked on Wednesday, four days before another planned mass rally.

Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit, convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front, was set upon by at least four non-ethnic Chinese assailants on Arran Street in Mong Kok at 7.40pm, a police source said.

The attack was the second against Sham in less than two months.

The Civil Human Rights Front said Sham had been smashed over the head with hammers and spanners but was conscious when sent to Kwong Wah Hospital in Yau Ma Tei. He was understood to be in stable condition.

The real question for Xi, as for any totalitarian, is "How many bodies is he willing to smash" to enforce his will? For Chairman Mao, the answer was, "As many as it takes." Mao killed 100 million. Will Xi go that far, or will he draw up short?

Because the answer to how many bodies he is willing to smash is somewhere between 1 (and done) to unlimited. And no one, including Xi, knows in advance what that number will be

Right now, Xi is in the preliminary stages of intimidation rather than military crackdown. As the WSJ reports, "Beijing hasn’t sent tanks into the streets. It’s trying to do the job with criminal gangs and technology."

The Chinese crackdown here is under way. Tanks haven’t rolled into Hong Kong à la Tiananmen Square in 1989. But Beijing is carrying out a subtler, though often still violent, effort to suppress dissent, hoping the world won’t notice. Ask Stanley Ho Wai-hong of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions.

The 35-year-old pro-democracy labor activist planned a community event Sept. 29 in Sai Kung, a fishing village in Hong Kong’s New Territories. But that afternoon, tens of thousands were rallying in the city against China’s human-rights abuses, so Mr. Ho canceled his event at the last minute. He was driving away when a stranger called him and asked him to come back so villagers could give him a gift. “It was a trap for murder,” he told me at the hospital earlier this month.

When he arrived back in Sai Kung, he says, three men ambushed him and bludgeoned him with metal rods. Mr. Ho fell to the ground and tried to cover his skull with his hands. It took only half a minute for bystanders to rescue him, but “30 seconds is a long time.” The attack left Mr. Ho with seven gashes in his head and five bruises on his back. His right thumb and three other fingers were broken, the left index finger so severely that he needed surgery.

So yes, Xi was serious about smashing bodies. We are not yet at the stage of grinding bones to powder. But it's coming.

Update: American Digest posts The Hidden History Of The Tiananmen Square Massacre, with many photos. "Massacre" is perhaps an understatement.