Violent clashes with police, storming the legislature,
vandalizing properties in the parliamentary building …… All these happened in the
United States, one of the most well-established democratic states in the world.
The event in the US Capitol shocked the world and an interesting narrative
followed. Messages from Chinese netizens flooded the Internet, trying to
discredit the overall desirability of democracy and accusing Western media and
politicians of upholding a “double standard.” They proclaimed, whereas the
Western world blamed pro-Trump protesters as “mobs,” it praised activists in
Hong Kong who broke into the legislature in 2019 as “democratic fighters.” This
comparison is at once intriguing and confusing. Even CNN international
correspondent, Will Ripley, made a similar tweet in Twitter [1]. In order to
determine whether these claims are justified, let us first review two earlier
occupy protests occurring in 2014 and 2019.
The first case that needs to be reviewed is the Taiwanese
Sunflower Movement in 2014. Since the rise of the Chinese economy in the early
2000s, the Beijing government has been using its economic power to entice
Taiwan to establish a closer relation with mainland China—first economically
and then politically. With the change of the ruling party of Taiwan from the
pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party to the pro-unification Nationalist
Party in 2008, a free trade pact, Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement
(ECFA), was signed between the Beijing and Taipei governments in 2010 and the
Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) was added under ECFA in June 2013.
Worried by the potential economic co-optation by an authoritarian state and
angered by the lack of transparency in the local legislative process, Taiwanese
student activists stormed the Legislative Yuan in March 2014 and occupied the building.
Despite the relatively confrontational tactic, the occupation received
widespread support from the Taiwanese society since the activists had exhausted
all sorts of peaceful means before undertaking the break-in action. Having
occupied the parliament for 24 days, the action successfully forced the Nationalist
government to put the CSSTA on hold and safeguarded the corrosion of democracy
in Taiwan.
Five years after the Sunflower Movement, activists in Hong
Kong learned the tactic from their Taiwanese counterparts and launched a
similar action. In 2019, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government
proposed to amend the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, which, if passed, would
allow for extradition requests from authorities in mainland China, Taiwan, and
Macau for criminal suspects. Being proposed at a time when the crackdown on the
pro-democracy movement was getting more and more intense, the law amendment,
which would send Hongkongers to China, the sovereign master of Hong Kong and an
authoritarian state lacking the rule of law, evoked a great fear in Hong Kong
society that political rights and civil liberties in the city would further
deteriorate. Without a democratically elected legislature, Hongkoners had no
choice but resort to street activism. 1.03 million and 2 million people took to
the street on 9 and 21 June 2019 to make a vocal rejection of the law amendment.
These peaceful and non-violent demonstrations however did not receive any
positive response from the HKSAR government. Young protesters therefore decided
to storm the Legislative Complex on 1 July 2019, trying to force the government
to withdraw the law amendment. As in Taiwan, this relatively violent break-in
action did not receive much condemnation from the local society—except
criticisms from pro-Beijing media and politicians—because it was broadly
perceived as an action trying to push the adamant HKSAR government heed public
opinion and resist the political intrusion of the authoritarian, Communist
China.
With the above details in mind, it is not difficult to see
the differences between the two cases in East Asia and the protest in the US. The
tactics of these occupy actions might look the same, but their nature is
totally different. While protests in Hong Kong and Taiwan aimed to defend civil
rights and liberties and counter the political and economic sway of Communist
China, the pro-Trump rally was an attempt to overturn the result of a
democratic presidential election—a result that has been endorsed by courts in
the US. Coinciding with the arrest of 53 pro-democracy activists, legislators
and supporters in Hong Kong, the protest in the US Capitol rendered 6 January
2021 one of the darkest days in the history of democracy [2]. Equally
important, the case reminds us that it is crucial to understand the causes and claims
of different protests so that we can make contextualized comparisons and avoid
producing myths in popular narratives that would lend leverage to
anti-democracy voices.
Inside the Legislative Complex on 1 July 2019 (1). Photo courtesy: Stand News
Inside the Legislative Complex on 1 July 2019
(2). Words on the paper (top right): “Payment is in the basket.” Words on the
paper (bottom right): “We are not thieves and we paid for the drinks.”
[1] https://twitter.com/willripleyCNN/status/1346945349315747841
[2]
It is widely believed that the mass arrest, which was made in the name of the
National Security Law legislated by the Beijing government last year to arrest
the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, was well-crafted to avoid
international attention since all media focuses were put on the ratifying
process of the US presidential election result on this day.