A Flawed Protest
Since the 2014 Reforms to the Hong Kong electoral system (which requires candidates running for the Island’s Chief Executive Position to pass a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) screening before they stand for elections), Hong Kong has been gripped by tensions. Thousands of protesters occupied city centers, signed petitions, and conducted hunger strikes, while the Hong Kong police skirmished and occasionally cracked down on the activists. It is now 2016, and the protests have only picked up in intensity. In the “fishball” protests last month, 90 police officers were injured and hundreds of protestors detained. With the 2017 elections just around the corner, however, no real changes have come. Do mass protests work in Hong Kong? Or are new, more creative methods necessary to saving democracy?
In September 26, 2014, Hong Kong activists began protesting outside government headquarters. By September 28, protesters had occupied city centers like the Admiralty, Causeway bay, and Mong Kok and their numbers swelled to over 100,000. These activists employed a classic civil technique: occupy high visibility districts with mass numbers, get the attention of international media, and add strength to the movement. Although they did get plenty of media attention, no significant aid ever materialized. Mainland Chinese remained silent, and the West offered little more than rhetorical support. By December, 2014, Hong Kong’s economy was crumbling, and the protests dispersed.
The activists’ failures represent a lack of understanding of their situation’s context. Mass protests work well in the West, where methods of change comes from the people. For tiny Hong Kong to resist the Chinese Communist Party, however, they need aid from other groups: either hailing from mainland China (in the form of copy-cat protests) or from the international community (in the form of sanctions against the CCP). The Chinese Communist Party knows this, however, and played its cards perfectly. To maintain order in China, it censored news of the protests and only filtered extremely biased/false information through. To keep the international community on its side, it kept Hong Kong’s police under control, limiting crackdowns and portraying the students as the aggressors. Without another Tiananmen style massacre, Western countries were never going to sanction the World’s second largest economy. Stranded and without help, the protesters were forced to disperse by a frustrated city tired of disorder and chaos.
Of course, all is not lost for the protesters. Democratic history is full of struggles against repressive regimes. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King are great examples of activists who worked around government limitations to create change. Next week, I will present expert opinions on how lessons from these movements can help the Hong Kong protesters.
