Hong Kong Protests

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Video: Innovative Tactics

Case Summary

Strategies & Tactics

Timeline:

Video: Police brutality, "nativism" and identity

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• Meticulously organized mass mobilization
• Economic: boycotting "blue" and supporting "yellow" businesses (sympathetic to protests
• Disruption of city processes (public transportation, HK airport, one of the busiest in the world)

Rhetoric

The Research Suggests:

Most often cited reasons for protesting:

• Extradition bill: pretext & initial spark
• Anti-government
• Police brutality
• End of handover agreement in 2047 (discussed as anti-Beijing/China involvement in HK affiars

Methods

Al Jazeera Start Here: Hong Kong Protests

(click video to play)

“if the bill passes, Hong Kong will become mainland China" - protester

• The extradition bill protests sparked the continuation of the larger protest cycle of the HK pro-democracy movement
• Anti-government sentiment, compounded by the repressive government response & police brutality, spurred participation from wide swaths of HK society
• Emphasis of the leaderless aspect both created a sense of unity and limited the government's targeted arrest of protesters
• Underlying the movement and activating participation is an acute fear and uncertainty about the future: the end of the handover agreement in 2047

• Primary sources: Text of the Extradition Bill & Carrie Lam's speech withdrawing the bill
• Secondary: news reports & articles, interviews, videos, Tweets
• 63 sources total
• 5 thematic areas:

Actors

Analysis

• Leaderless
• Diverse: crosses demographic boundaries (age, gender, education, profession)

• The thematic areas used for sorting data were further condensed into three main sections of analysis:
• strategies & tactics
• rhetoric
• actors
• Developments beyond the initial scope of the research (March 2019 - September 2019) are discussed in impacts.

What makes a movement successful?

"Courage breeds courage": open acts of defiance and collective action decrease the perception of risk (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011)

Impacts

the district council elections were perceived as "a de facto referendum on the five demands of protesters” and the campaign “has since morphed into wider demonstrations against the government” - Natalie Wong, South China Morning Post Senior Reporter

• District Council Elections
• Coronavirus & continuation of protests
• U.S. House vote on the resolution: Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act
• Arrest of key pro-democracy figures

• The more diverse the participation in a resistance – in terms of gender, age, religion, ethnicity, ideology, profession, and socioeconomic status – the more difficult it is for an adversary to isolate participants and adopt a repressive strategy “short of maximal and indiscriminate repression (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011)
• Sense of shared purpose binds together participants of a movement. A sense of the group as focusing together, a “conscience collective,” fuses cognitive and moral unity (Goodwin et al., 2009)

Questions?

Research Questions

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Joshua Wong emerged as a leader in the 2014 Occupy Movement, and continues to be an active pro-democracy voice

tweet @SarinaPhu

Literature

email sarina.phu@du.edu

Abstract

• Social movements are defined as “collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities” (Tarrow, 2011).
• 2 theoretical divisions:
• structural approach: emphasizes economic resources, political structures, formal organizations, and social networks
• cultural or constructionist: focuses on frames, identities, meanings, and emotions
• situations of “extreme threat” can facilitate collective action (Einwohner, 2003; Goldstone & Tilly, 2001).

Why did the protests continue beyond the initial demands?

Why were the protesters successful in achieving the withdrawal of the extradition bill?

In 2019, the government of Hong Kong introduced an extradition bill that sparked the largest protests in its history. Since the bill’s withdrawal, activists expanded their demands to include universal suffrage, democracy, and an investigation into police brutality. This research seeks to answer the questions: Why were protests successful in achieving the withdrawal of the bill? And, why did the protests continue after the initial demand was fulfilled? By analyzing news coverage, I find that the protests achieved their original success because of the diversity of participants and universal fear of Beijing encroachment on Hong Kongers’ freedoms. The violent repression enabled protesters to emphasize anti-government aims, a revanchism accounting for the longevity of the movement. This research builds on a rich tradition of scholarship on social movements and finds that the Hong Kong protesters capitalized on an opportunity presented by the extradition bill, revitalizing an existing pro-democracy movement.

Why might a protest continue beyond its initial demands?

• social movements grow, evolve, and decline naturally
• protest cycles: movements that diversify, address a wider range of targets, and use varied tactics as the number of challenges, campaigns, organizations, protest actions, and participants rise (Whittier, 2008)
• conflicts and deflections within movements and increased confrontations with the state are attempts to maintain momentum in social movement (Tarrow, 2011).

Keywords: protest; Hong Kong; social movements; democracy; China

Resistance is (Not) Futile: A Case Study of the Hong Kong Extradition Bill Protests

Acknowledgments

Sarina Phu

A Substantial Research Paper (SRP) at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies

Advisor: Dr. Marie Berry

Spring 2020

I could not have completed my research without the help of many others: Dr. Marie Berry, for your unending understanding, support, and willingness to take a chance on someone (who you hadn't even met!); Dr. Chen Reis for advising me first and making the time to work with me; my friends and family who have seen the highs and lows of the research process - especially Victoria, Bryce, and Kam; the professors who, over the years ignited this curiosity for social movements and nonviolence, especially Dr. Jonathan Pinckney for the class that started it all; and last but not least, to the Hong Kongers, who are still fighting to keep their freedoms.