Hong Kong in Revolt. Au Loong-Yu
on 27 July, with 280,000 on the streets, an angry response to the Yuen Long incident one week prior. The banned march turned into street fighting again after a police attack. From then on this became the norm. On 20 October another illegal march – this time riskier than the first one – in Tsim Sha Tsui drew 350,000 people. No later illegal marches could compare with this. Those who dared to participate in this banned march were more likely to be ‘dark yellow’, and the march can be used as a base for a rough estimate of the size of this group.
Another category relates to the means the protesters use: jung mou paai (the ‘braves’) versus wo lei fei (the ‘non-violent current’). The former were those who dared to fight the police with bricks and later Molotov cocktails. The latter is often seen as synonymous with the term ‘pan-democrat supporters’. The former consists of those that advocate and make use of force, from throwing bricks to Molotov cocktails, which the latter abstain from doing so. The ‘braves’ first became known when a clandestine group described itself as such and allegedly was associated with a small explosion outside the LegCo building on 9 December 2014. The 2019 ‘braves’ did not necessarily have organisational continuity with the 2014 version; still, the latter might claim the former’s legacy. How large were the ‘braves’? No one knows for sure because of their clandestine nature, but they were much smaller than the ‘dark yellow’ current, although they have made recruits from the latter. Some have estimated their size as being between five and ten thousand, or slightly more (for more see ‘The 1997 Generation’ section in Chapter 2).
Figure 1 Breakdown of the protest participants
Political Inclination of the Protesters
The yellow camp itself is differentiated by competitive political inclinations. The CCPOS differentiated between seven categories of political inclination in its October 2019 across-the-board survey (i.e. including the pro-Beijing parties). For our discussion about the yellow camp we choose four of them, as below:22
Table 1.1 Political inclinations of protesters, 2014–2019
| September 2014 | October 2019 | |
| Moderate democrats | 37.9% | 40.0% |
| Radical democrats | 3.9% | 6.2% |
| Localists | n/a | 14.1% |
| Centre/no political inclination | 48.6% | 33.5% |
In 2014 there had not been any survey about the localists yet, as it was a new phenomenon. To understand the picture of the localists’ mass base before 2019, we can refer to another study which showed that by March 2016 the localists accounted for 8.4 percent amongst all categories of political inclination.23 The above surveys show the strength of the localists and how fewer people were neutral in 2019 than in 2014. The ‘radical democrats’ also experienced a significant increase while the pan-democrats’ growth was the least impressive.
Another survey showed the political inclinations of protesters at different protests:24
Table 1.2 Political inclinations of protesters, June–July 2019
| 9 June* | 12 June | 16 June* | 21 June | 27 July* | |
| Moderate democrats | 43.2% | 29.5% | 41.1% | 29.8% | 34.9% |
| Radical democrats | 3.2% | 2.1% | 3.4% | 7.8% | 8.5% |
| Localists | 27% | 25.4% | 18.0% | 28.6% | 37.4% |
| Centre/no political inclination | 21.1% | 38.9% | 21.3% | 21.1% | 8.9% |
* These three protests were the largest, while the remaining two were much smaller, but more radical.
One can see that, at the protests surveyed in Table 1.2, there was a higher share of ‘localists’ than in the city-wide survey in Table 1.1. Neither survey must lead us into believing that the relevant political parties were necessarily as strong (or as weak) as the survey might suggest. Firstly, it is debatable how much these political categories can actually tell us. While the term ‘pan-democrat’ had a clearer meaning – those who worked within the Basic Law and were in general law-abiding and therefore non-violent – the term ‘localist’ is quite confusing. ‘Localists’ range from simply ‘loving Hong Kong’, and thinking that Hong Kongers’ identity must be respected, to outright hatred against mainland Chinese people (for the latter category see Chapter 2). It was not clear how the many thousands of sou jan, or first-time activists, interpreted this term. The term ‘radical democrats’ is also a puzzle. One may argue that this lack of clarity is a reflection of the belated development of party politics in general in Hong Kong, and also of the legacy of colonialism.
Secondly, we should briefly discuss the underdevelopment and organisational weakness of all political parties in Hong Kong. Therefore, when people identified themselves as being from a certain ‘current’ this did not necessarily imply that they identified with a particular party. When two million people took to the streets on 16 June, the vast majority of them did not belong to any party at all. Also, the high proportion of people identifying as ‘centre/no political inclination’ might suggest the proportion of people whose political inclinations remained fluid and could change relatively easily. For the many thousands of sou jan this was their first or second time that they had joined any protest, waved any flag, or clashed with the police.
Tactics
In terms of political objectives, there is continuity between the Umbrella Movement and the 2019 revolt in that both were pursuing universal suffrage. It is this which partly allowed the latter to continue its mobilisation even after Carrie Lam announced the withdrawal of the extradition bill. On the other hand, in terms of tactics, the 2014 movement was very different from the 2019 revolt. While the former’s main tactic was to occupy the main thoroughfares of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, the latter consciously avoided this tactic from the very beginning. Once the 9 June demonstration had proven the enthusiasm of the people, online agitation chose the ‘be like water’ tactic instead, which meant demonstrating and confronting the police in a mobile way. The term can be traced to online discussion quoting the words of the kung-fu master Bruce Lee:
Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Put water into a cup. It becomes the cup. Put water into a teapot. It becomes the