China’s governance of Hong Kong is a series of object lessons in the self-defeating consequences of repression. In 2014, local authorities brutally broke up popular demonstrations led by young people who were reacting to Beijing’s refusal to honor a commitment to democracy in the former British colony. That, in turn, inspired the rise of a radical new opposition movement that for the first time proposed consideration of Hong Kong independence; it won six seats in elections to the Legislative Council in September.

Now Chinese Communist authorities are compounding their error. Rather than tolerate or conciliate with the dissidents, who represent a large fraction of Hong Kong’s youths, the regime is heavy handedly cracking down on them. On Monday, the National People’s Congress in Beijing ordered that two of the new council members be denied their seats and face “legal consequences” because they insulted China in taking their oaths of office. In so doing, Beijing ran roughshod over Hong Kong’s judicial system, which was already considering the matter.

Street protests erupted in Hong Kong even before the intervention was announced, and Hong Kong observers predicted more unrest. In short, China is perpetuating a cycle in which its own actions radicalize Hong Kong’s opposition and turn more of the population against it.

A majority of Hong Kong’s 7 million residents probably don’t support the independence agenda of Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Sixtus Leung, 30. The two legislative election winners inserted a derogatory term for China into their oaths last month and held up a banner saying Hong Kong is not a part of China. But even defenders of the status quo will be offended by Beijing’s latest violation of the territory’s rule of law and system of self-rule. Hong Kong prides itself on the independent judiciary it inherited from Britain, which is vital to the city’s attraction of foreign investment.

Now China has demonstrated that the rule of law can be arbitrarily broken for political reasons. That follows Beijing’s rupture last year of Hong Kong’s constitutional guarantees of free expression. Five booksellers who published political books were lured or abducted into the mainland and imprisoned. While four have returned, one is still missing in China. Meanwhile, books critical of the Chinese leadership no longer are published.

China will almost certainly succeed in preventing the opposition legislators from taking their seats, and it probably can ride out protest demonstrations, as it did in 2014. But the repression is more likely to further animate than end the nascent independence movement. Most people in Hong Kong were content to be part of China when they believed freedom of expression and the rule of law were guaranteed, and when local democratic rule was on the horizon. More will now reconsider. In willfully alienating them, the regime has traded a sullen short-term peace for long-term instability.

The Washington Post