Social media aided protest, but now hobbles its success
HONG KONG >> The three months of protests in Hong Kong reveal the state of democracy today — how the quest for freedom can’t be snuffed out, even by the most powerful autocratic systems, and how hard it is to achieve lasting change in the age of Twitter when everyone is a leader, a follower, a broadcaster and a critic, and compromise becomes nearly impossible.
The Hong Kong protests were sparked by many grievances, but the biggest is that many Hong Kongers self-identify as free men and women and they reject the ruling bargain the Communist Party has imposed on mainland China and wants to impose on Hong Kong: To get rich is glorious, but to speak your mind is dangerous.
Why do Hong Kongers feel compelled to assert their identity as a free people now? China is so much more open today than it was three decades ago — and it’s so much more closed today than it was five years ago.
The anticipated trend toward more openness in mainland China has been reversed since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, when he cracked down on even mild dissent, and then, in 2018, made himself president for life.
That cold breeze from Beijing, where people now don’t even whisper dissent, with cameras and microphones everywhere, has wafted down to Hong Kong. And the youth here in particular are pushing back.
After a decade of democracy being snuffed out globally, Hong Kong is part of a counter-trend seen in places like Russia and Turkey, where people are using any sliver of freedom of expression or vote to push back.
But there’s another global trend apparent here: the contradictory effects of social networks on political movements. Facebook and Twitter make it much easier to mobilize lots of people fast but give everyone a digital megaphone, making it much harder for a leader to emerge or compromises to be reached.
The Hong Kong protesters proclaim they have “no leader” and insist on all five of their crowdsourced demands, including universal suffrage to elect the city’s administrators.
But no movement gets 100% of what it wants, especially in Hong Kong, which has three systems. There’s Beijing, the sovereign power; the conservative pro-Beijing Hong Kongers, who dominate the local administration and accept the limited democracy rules inherited from Britain; and the full-democracy-aspiring youth in the streets.
The only possible outcome is a compromise. But Hong Kong protesters are now being hobbled by the same social networks: Anyone who tries to compromise will get torched online. These modern movements are crowdsourced but also crowd-enforced.
South China Morning Post columnist Alex Lo notes, “From Gezi Park in Istanbul to Tahrir Square in Cairo, revolutions and rebellions driven by social media have all ended in failure.”
My view: Social networks are making inefficient authoritarian regimes more frail. See: Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Russia. But they’re making efficient authoritarians even more efficient. See: China. And they’re making democracies ungovernable. See: America, Brexit and Hong Kong.
And compromise is made harder by online-enabled extremists.
I admire the courage of Hong Kongers to defend their city’s unique character. But compromise makes sense when facing an overwhelming power like Beijing.
It’s unclear if Beijing or its Hong Kong allies will offer even limited universal suffrage — or if this democracy movement could compromise on it.
If so, when the tear gas clears, the question will be: Is there protest leadership that can say yes to it?