Rebels with a cause: How the 'post-80s' generation is rejecting old ways of protest in Hong Kong

To those who equate taking part in social movements with joining marches and chanting slogans, recent events may have come as a shock.

While the scenes of protesters against border new-town projects trying to pry open the Legislative Council building's front doors with bamboo poles were still fresh in the public's mind, two students, aged 13 and 14, were arrested for carrying weapons to a subsequent protest. The pair had with them two 20cm knives, a combat knife, around 10 cutter blades and an iron hammer.

A third youth, aged 17, was arrested a week later for taking what police considered to be dangerous items, including an awl and spray paint, to a follow-up rally outside Legco.

"What are these young people thinking?" is perhaps the most asked question from those old enough to be their parents.

With youth unemployment at more than double the overall rate and fewer than one-fifth of local students able to get into publicly funded university programmes, some have concluded that the youth are "angry" simply because it is getting harder to move up the social ladder. They rebel because they can't find a way to get the jobs and education that would provide them the money they want, goes this line of thinking.

But such thinking is obsolete, said Professor Wu Xiaogang, who heads the Centre for Applied Social and Economic Research at the University of Science and Technology. "They are two distinctly different groups - those who choose the path of social activism and those whose major cause of worry is how to get ahead in a career," he said.

Unlike the previous generation, those born after 1980 are more willing to stand up for social issues that do not directly affect them, he said, as witnessed in the protest against new towns in which most participants will not see their homes razed no matter how the debate ends.