Modern warfare hasn’t figured out urban insurgencies. Pot shots and IEDs, sabotage, et cetera would have made China’s occupation of Hong Kong a PITA. It would raise the stakes of invasion from worldwide outrage to having to destroy Hong Kong in a Pyrrhic victory.
Only in a sense of US rules of engagement.
However, look at other less scrupulous countries dealing with urban combat and you will see that while bloody they can pacify quickly.
If you know that resisting means death of your family, you're less likely to resist.
If your neighbour's best way to safeguard his family is to expose every guerilla fighter he knows he will do it.
The thing is, it won't be pyhrric victory, it will be a full and near lossless victory for PLA. Most HKers will lay down their arms because people generally dont want to die in a hopeless struggle and collective punishment will flush out the remaining guerrillas.
This is far from universal. Chechnya was bloody. Syria remains bloody. Short of razing a city, we don’t have great tools for fighting urban insurgencies.
1. Chechnya WAS pacified when Russians started using inhumane tactics.
2. Chechnya had an organized military to fight Russians.
3. Chechnya and Syria had rebels use military equipment of similar quality as their adversary.
4. Assad and Yeltzin's armies were very mismanaged/poor quality.
I posit that PLA is
1. Actually professional and not disorganized like russian/Syrian militaries
2. HKers will not be able to capture PLA equipment in any significant amounts
Do you have any examples? I'm not challenging you, I just don't know much about this topic.
Taliban taking over cities in Afghanistan
More "police" actions:
China pacifying Uighur and Tibet regions.
El-Sisi pacifying Muslim brotherhood in Egypt.
Basically, intense indiscriminate violence "solves" some problems.
If China does that, it goes from "that not-fantastic-country that produces cheap iPhones" to "this-is-where-blood-diamonds-come-from".
The way it will act can have a direct and profund impact on its exports and GDP.
Kashoggi's murder basically killed a 500 billion dollar project.
It had a thousand ways to fail, but it did mostly because of Kashogi's murder.
We’re exploring the hypothetical military suppression of Hong Kong’s system of laws and government. Nothing is good in this scenario. The options are coöperation (and likely concentration camps), escape and resistance.
Hong Kong can’t win a war against China. It’s too vulnerable to blockade. Barring a Berlin airlift, their strategy would be waiting out Xi with urban guerrilla tactics.
It would at least cause a delay big enough for the west to act.