The government's dramatic climbdown over the National Security Bill did more than prove the power of public protests; it showed for the first time the immense power of the internet to mobilise people.
While the Net still lags behind traditional media, its instant and interactive nature is at last being used to organise and inform. And in the past week, its influence has been inescapable.
Many commentators have said that most of the half a million people at last week's demonstrations were the long-suffering and generally quiescent middle classes - Hong Kong's internet class.
The internet has been used as a tool for social activists almost since its inception. Political, social and environmental pressure groups around the world have found the internet an ideal forum for their causes. A good site can offer a focal point for a group to update its supporters, a message board for communications and a source of graphics, posters or stickers for distribution. Some of the better organised sites have even managed to post live video reports from the front lines of demonstrations. Hong Kong may not be quite that advanced yet, and visitor numbers to many of the Article 23 sites is still relatively low, but there is no doubt the scores of anti-Article 23 sites set up during the past eight months, along with a similar number of mailing lists and newsletters promoting the march, had a significant influence on the size of the turnout last Tuesday.
The biggest and most impressive of the anti-sites was (not very surprisingly), built overseas. The United States-based Global Coalition Against Article 23 Legislation pulled out all the stops in the design of their site. The coalition's pages offered downloadable flyers, e-mail and website petitions, letter outlines and phone scripts, contacts of world leaders and regular news updates. And they did it in Chinese and English.
The site outshone protest organisers the Civil Human Rights Front, whose Chinese-only site offered information and flyers to download, but seemingly had trouble keeping their site updated.
