Technology reshaped Asia’s protest movements – but can it effect real change?

From Hong Kong to Myanmar, anti-government activists have harnessed smartphones and social media to plan protests and rally people to their cause
While sceptics see online activism achieving little amid rising repression, others argue the embers of protest can now never be fully extinguished

Samir Puri

Published: 4:44pm, 21 Jul 2021

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Technology has reshaped the dynamics of Asia’s anti-government protests and the social movements behind them, as recent events in Hong Kong, Thailand and Myanmar have shown.

Just a decade ago, smartphones and social media were in their infancy as consumer products, yet they had already proven themselves to be powerful organising tools for protesters.

In both the Arab spring protests that swept the Middle East at the start of last decade and 2011’s anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, activists used social media to publicise their causes and coordinate their actions.

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China’s Rebel City: The Hong Kong Protests

The Hong Kong protests of 2019-2020 showed how technological advances – in the form of near-ubiquitous smartphone ownership and internet connectivity – could allow for a seamless crossover between online and offline campaigns, and provide a platform for dissent to continue in the virtual world even after physical protests had subsided.

Using their smartphones, the city’s youthful activists adopted guerilla-like tactics to stage numerous sudden, flashmob-style protests that persisted for the best part of a year in spite of an implacable clampdown – with organisers communicating in real time via their devices in a bid to stay one step ahead of the police.

How the Hong Kong protests affected overseas Chinese in Asia and beyond

When Covid-19 and the National Security Law ultimately put an end to the unrest, an unknown number of protesters fled Hong Kong. Last year, Taiwan issued 10,813 residence permits and 1,576 settlement permits to people from the city, nearly twice the previous year’s numbers – 5,858 and 1,474, respectively – although it is unclear how many recipients were pro-democracy activists.

Still, online platforms have allowed even those in self-exile to continue their activism. On June 4 this year – the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown – an event usually held in Taiwan’s Liberty Plaza to commemorate the tragedy was moved online instead. It featured exiled protesters from Hong Kong, Myanmar, Thailand and Tibet, perhaps suggesting a certain permanence of common cause between the region’s different protest movements.

Last year, when Thai protesters took to the streets to rally against the government of former coup leader Prayuth Chan-ocha over a lack of political reform – later expanding their demands to include unprecedented calls for limits on Thailand’s monarchy, headed since 2016 by King Maha Vajiralongkorn – Hong Kong activists went online to offer their moral support.

The #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag, aimed at conveying solidarity between pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Myanmar, was used some 11 million times in the 12 months to April this year, according to Twitter, which launched a dedicated emoji to run alongside it.

Echoes of the past

Myanmar’s anti-government protesters have faced a far bloodier crackdown than any of the other recent protest movements mentioned in this article, with activist group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reporting in May that more than 800 people had been killed by security forces since the February 1 military coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Amid calls for the international community to do more to restore democracy, members of the country’s Civil Disobedience Movement have used social media to direct attention to their anti-coup protests and raise awareness of the junta’s various crackdowns.

Despite their willingness to continue running the gauntlet of repression, Myanmar’s protesters face a worsening Covid-19 crisis, and it is still unclear if they can repeat the successes of earlier generations of activists in the region.

Protesters march during a flashmob-style protest in Myanmar earlier this month. Photo: AP

Past popular uprisings brought down dictatorships, as happened in Thailand in 1973 and the Philippines in 1986, and paved the way for new forms of democratic government, as in South Korea in the 1980s.

Others, such as Myanmar’s 8888 Uprising of 1988 and 1989’s Tiananmen Square protests, failed to achieve their goals.

The legacy of the movements that did succeed may provide comfort to today’s protesters, however, if they see themselves as part of a longer lineage of activism that has reshaped national trajectories.

Eyes on the future

The longer-term implications of technological advances on Asia’s modern protest movements are up for debate.

Sceptics say disempowered youths are hardly likely to alter their homelands’ political destinies through expressions of solidarity alone, especially as online repression increases in places like Thailand, where authorities warned users of social media app Clubhouse about political content after thousands of activists, including some in exile, used it to take part in pro-democracy discussions.

Others argue the embers of pro-democracy activism can now never be fully extinguished by authoritarian regimes, as even after they are shut down in the streets they can continue smouldering online.

Thailand protests: is Milk Tea Alliance stirring global support?

The #MilkTeaAlliance movement is transnational in nature, meaning protests in one place could revive activism elsewhere, creating a self-sustaining dynamic that is likely to endure at least for a while.

Another emerging lesson seems clear: since innovations in consumer technology are only going to continue, all sides are going to want to adopt the latest technologies in service of their causes. The future of mass protests, therefore, is likely to look ever more unrecognisable when compared to the protests of the past.

Samir Puri is a Senior Fellow in Urban Security and Hybrid Warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore