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How the Hong Kong Protestors’ Tactical Brilliance Backed Beijing into a Corner
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Since Hong Kong’s momentous anti-extradition bill protest on June 9th, tensions between the protesters and the authorities have continued to escalate. The demonstration on August 12th which forced the closure of the Hong Kong International Airport suggests that the protesters are unlikely to back down anytime soon, even as the People’s Armed Police of the mainland Chinese government gathers forces in Shenzhen, preparing to possibly use violence to end the protests. The current conflict arose from the introduction of a bill allowing alleged criminals in Hong Kong to be extradited to China which is widely seen as a brash attempt to erode the “one country, two systems” principle.
While the Hong Kong government has refused to meet the protesters’
, likely under pressure from Beijing, the protesters have successfully forced Carrie Lam to suspend the extradition bill. Effectively killing the bill is a significant achievement, particularly considering the fact that Carrie Lam, at least to a significant degree,
the interest of Beijing, which is firmly against legitimizing any kind of political opposition.
One of the reasons for the effectiveness of the protest movement is the decision to remain leaderless. In an op-ed article in 2017, Nicholas Berggruen, chairman of the Berggruen Institute,
that resistance movements need strong and charismatic leaders to succeed. Many resistance movements such as the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King Jr., the resistance to apartheid with Nelson Mandela, and the India Independence Movement with Gandhi benefited greatly from such leadership.
But the outcome of Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy movement suggests that the current protests would not be nearly as robust or effective if it
did have such leaders. Joshua Wong, the strong and charismatic leader of the Umbrella movement in 2014, was
in 2017 for unlawful assembly. With strong leaders present, the authorities can arrest them, fatally weakening a movement. Given the
of the rule of law in Hong Kong, the authorities could conceivably jail all of the movement’s linchpins with considerable ease. But with a leaderless movement, the authorities have no such power. So far, the Hong Kong Police Force has arrested hundreds of protesters while the movement has not lost any momentum because the contribution of no single individual is vital.
Just as they are doing with seemingly every obstacle in their way, Hong Kong protesters innovated around the need for a strong leader. They are using communications technology to be both highly organized and leaderless, leaving the authorities unable to take out any key elements that would cause the effort to collapse.
Where a strong leader would make strategic decisions, the protesters are using a Reddit-like forum called LIHKG where ideas can be upvoted, allowing the best ones to rise to the top. Hong Kong’s largest citywide strike in decades, and the city’s only general strike in 50 years,
from a post on this forum. Translated from Cantonese, the post read, “Skip work, you may lose your job. But if you don’t skip work, you will lose Hong Kong and your home! Freedom is not free, I beg you, let’s recover Hong Kong.” The ideas that are most representative of the desires of the participants end up going forward, giving the movement a greater degree of legitimacy and likely winning more support from the Hong Kong populace.
Leaderless organization also allows those with the ability and desire to lead to make valuable contributions without taking very much risk or adopting the enormous responsibilities of a leader. When the leaders of the Umbrella Movement were arrested and jailed, the Hong Kong government and Beijing made an example out of them, successfully discouraging others from playing such a role.
This time, Hong Kong protesters are
not only leadership, but every necessary function including delivering supplies (protection, umbrellas, post-it notes, food, roadblocks, cones for controlling the flow of teargas, etc.), getting protesters to particular locations, funding, designing and distributing posters, providing information on risks such as police presence, legal advice, medical attention, and more. Crowdsourcing allows burdens to be distributed much more widely than does formal organizing.
Of course, the movement’s leaderless organization could also prove to be a disadvantage. In her book,
, techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci observes that formal organizing has key advantages for resistance movements. The tiresome and costly planning associated with organized resistance also helps to make a movement more resilient. With higher sunk costs, people would be less willing to abandon their cause.
Hong Kong protesters’ leaderless approach may also be a disadvantage because more radical demonstrators can take protests too far, damaging the credibility of the movement. While the protests have been largely peaceful, violent outbreaks are an ongoing problem. When violent protesters
the Legislative Council building on July 1st, many of their sympathizers felt they had gone too far. Most recently, protesters brutally
2 individuals suspected of being agents of Beijing at the Hong Kong International Airport. Such events risk alienating supporters and lending credibility to the CCP’s
of the movement.
Nonetheless, under the conditions in which they find themselves, leaderless organization appears to be the only viable approach. In addition to preventing over-reliance on key individuals by utilizing technology, the protesters do not rely on any single communications platform. When Telegram suffered a denial of service attack
from Mainland China or when the mobile networks were overloaded, protesters
to Airdrop to send messages over Bluetooth. They are even
Tinder and Pokemon Go to mobilize protesters.
Another element to the protesters’ resilience was the decision to abandon the occupation strategy used in Occupy Central protests of the Umbrella Movement in exchange for a highly fluid approach. The protesters package and sell this guerilla approach with the phrase “Be Water” coined by Bruce Lee. With this phrase, the protesters are making a counter-intuitive strategic insight into crisp, elegant, and motivating message. Having arisen from people’s
of being arrested, the subtext of the phrase is that being strong and effective doesn’t mean standing your ground. It means retreating to fight another day. The reason the Umbrella Movement was not more successful was, in part, its rigidity. Protesters stayed mostly in one place where they could be identified, monitored, and eventually arrested. The protesters saw that a fluid approach, where swift retreat from momentary danger is not seen as cowardice, would be a stronger one under Hong Kong’s undemocratic conditions. This insight, which the protesters are putting to great practical use, is the legacy of ancient Chinese philosophy for governance and
. Lao Tsu
, “Nothing is softer or more yielding than water. Yet, given time, it can erode even the hardest stone. That’s how the weak can defeat the strong, and the supple can win out over the stiff.” Continue...
