Civil Disobedience in Hong Kong
and its Conceptual Entanglements
Brian Denny
Paper prepared for the 2015 Western Political Science Association Meeting
April 3, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada
Introduction
With the recent escalation of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement from routinized and
orderly demonstrations to mass civil disobedience, an examination of the epistemological
concepts relevant to civil disobedience may help explain the critical response from some in
Hong Kong. This paper aims to identify the disconnect between, on the one hand, general
concepts of civil disobedience originating from the legacies of historical civil disobedience
figures and, on the other hand, the instrumentalist approach to civil disobedience that
disregards conscientiousness. This shifting epistemology is then juxtaposed against the broader
civil disobedience campaign in Hong Kong, including the promotion of civil disobedience tactics
and deliberation of electoral reform proposals by Occupy Central and the actual occupation by
student groups.
1
Introduction
In January 2013, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, a professor of constitutional law at Hong Kong University
published an article suggesting that civil disobedience may be necessary for achieving universal
suffrage in Hong Kong. Tai’s article, citing the non-violent law breaking campaigns of both
Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., marked an escalation of tactics among a segment
of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists. Soon after this publication, Tai joined with another
professor and a religious leader in organizing a community group called “Occupy Central with
Love and Peace” (Occupy Central). Occupy Central used the threat of mass civil disobedience in
an attempt to pressure the government into implementing a particular plan for electoral reform,
a plan Occupy Central members developed through internal deliberation and an informal
referendum of Hong Kong voters. Just days before Occupy Central’s planned civil disobedience
was to take place, student protesters, some of whom had prominent roles in the deliberations,
trespassed on a government office courtyard, leading to an 11-week occupation of
thoroughfares running through several portions of Hong Kong.
Dubbed the “Umbrella
Movement”, so named after protesters used open umbrellas to block tear gas thrown by police,
the student occupation was distinct from, yet partially developed out of, Occupy Central’s plan
for mass civil disobedience.
Given this “new era of civil disobedience” for pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong,1 an
examination of the relationship between Hong Kong’s recent activism, that is, Occupy Central
and the Umbrella Movement, and the existing theoretical literature on civil disobedience seems
1
Jeffie Lam and Joyce Ng, “Is This Goodbye to Occupy Central?; ‘We Failed,’ Admits Leader of Civil Disobedience
Group, as He Says Date for Sit-in Will Be Chosen to Cause ‘Minimal Damage’ to the HK Economy,” South China
Morning Post, September 3, 2014.
2
in order.
The civil disobedience literature is a disjointed combination of post-praxis
justifications and theory-driven generalizations.
It is my contention that the disconnect
between practice and theory provides a generally taken-for-granted moral high ground for
those engaged in civil disobedience, most particularly among those supportive of the aims
being pursued.
This presumption of morality results from the inconsistencies within the
academic literature and is made apparent by the contradictions between common notions of
civil disobedience and assertions made by celebrated historical figures. This gap has been
widened by the advent of an increasingly instrumentalist approach to the practice of civil
disobedience in which one’s goals become largely irrelevant to the moral considerations of civil
disobedience. In such a paradigm, the act of civil disobedience is decontextualized theoretically
and becomes a mere tactic while often retaining the residual moral appeal inherited from its
historical legacy.
In order to support the above claims, I will present a broad sketch of the civil
disobedience literature with emphasis on several of its most prominent practitioners. This will
serve two purposes: to construct a framework of the basic concepts relevant to civil
disobedience and to demonstrate a general lack of unity within these basic concepts. I will then
trace the development and planning of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central and the actual student
occupations which, although distinct from Occupy Central, were progressions facilitated and
emboldened by the organizational planning. The discussion section will more directly apply the
earlier conceptual framework while noting the contradictions or problematic assumptions used
in the civil disobedience campaign. This approach will highlight the ways in which the disunity
3
of theory becomes problematic for the application of civil disobedience, particularly in the
recent case of Hong Kong.
Concepts and Justifications
No single agreed upon definition exists for civil disobedience. Both theorists and practitioners
have debated even the most basic definitional requirements.
The most straightforward
conception of civil disobedience entails the breaking of a law as a means of protesting an
injustice perpetrated by a government. 2 Orthodox theorists with stringent definitional
requirements often specify that only direct civil disobedience, in which the law being broken is
also the law being protested, can legitimately be called civil disobedience. 3 Indirect civil
disobedience, on the other hand, occurs when one law is broken to protest a different law or
source of injustice. One famous example of direct civil disobedience is Gandhi’s 1930 defiance
of the British Salt Act, a law that made possession of salt in India a crime unless it had been
purchased from a colonial salt monopoly. In protest, Gandhi led thousands of citizens to the
coast, where he picked up a trivial amount of natural sea salt, initiating a massive campaign of
defiant salt gathering across the country.4 Generally speaking, the rationale behind acts of
direct civil disobedience, such as Gandhi’s salt gathering, are plainly evident, making these acts
more readily justifiable than other types of civil disobedience, all else being equal.
2
For a discussion of civil disobedience aimed at corporate interests, see Michael Walzer, “Civil Disobedience and
Corporate Authority” Dissent 16.5 (1969): 395-406.
3
Supreme Court Associate Justice Abe Fortas goes so far as to reject the possibility of justifying indirect civil
disobedience. Paul Harris, “Introduction: The Nature and Moral Justification of Civil Disobedience,” in Civil
Disobedience, ed. Paul Harris (Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington, 1989), 27.
4
Constitutional Rights Foundation, “Bringing Down an Empire: Gandhi and Civil Disobedience,” Bill of Rights in
Action, Summer 2000, http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-16-3-b-bringing-down-an-empiregandhi-and-civil-disobedience.
4
It was Henry David Thoreau, however, who first detailed a contemporary Western case
of what is now often called civil disobedience. In his 1849 essay, Resistance to Civil Government,
which was posthumously retitled Civil Disobedience, Thoreau expressed his moral objection to
both America’s war with Mexico and the Fugitive Slave Laws. Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax
that, he believed, would have most directly implicated him in what he saw as grave injustices.
Since the nature of the injustices did not immediately provide any fundamentally unjust laws to
disobey, his refusal to pay the poll tax most closely approximated disobedience directed toward
the injustice. In Thoreau’s estimation, refusing to pay the poll tax allowed him to act as a
“counter-friction to stop the machine” of what he saw as organized oppression.5
Some theorists classify Thoreau’s actions as being wholly outside the sphere of civil
disobedience,6 while others simply distinguish his protest as one of indirect civil disobedience
since he broke one law to protest another. Because justification of any act of civil disobedience
requires an assessment of the context in which it takes place, justifying indirect civil
disobedience partially hinges on the particular law being broken and its symbolic or functional
relationship to the original injustice. Thoreau’s essay attempted to explicitly connect his refusal
to pay the tax with his refusal to contribute toward the perpetuation of injustice, but if he had
instead chosen to disobey an entirely unrelated law, such as a traffic ordinance, his justification
may have been harder to explain.
5
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience,” 1849, Accessed January 2, 2015,
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper2/thoreau/civil.html.
6
In his recent systematic review of conceptualizations of civil disobedience, Raffaele Laudani refers to Thoreau’s
refusal to pay taxes in protest as an “act of citizenship”, following Engin Isin. Raffaele Laudani, Disobedience in
Western Political Thought: A Genealogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See also E. F. Isin, Being
Political: Genealogies of Citizenship (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), and Acts of Citizenship, ed.
E. F. Isin and G. M. Nielsen (London: Zed Books, 2008).
5
The second basic, albeit less objectively measurable, characteristic common to various
definitions of civil disobedience is its use as a mode of address. Those engaged in civil
disobedience almost always take precautions to ensure both the broader community and the
authorities understand the law-breaking as a plea for justice. Strict adherence to non-violence
is often one of these precautions. Those protesters who are, however, most directly concerned
with obeying their own conscience rather than seeking the restoration of systemic justice have
less incentive to rally public support for their specific act of civil disobedience. This typically
stems from the protester refusing to comply with a law which obliges an unjust action. Under a
paradigm that distinguishes between such acts, Thoreau’s refusal to pay the required poll tax
would be deemed an act of conscientious objection rather than civil disobedience. The fact
that Gandhi and his followers spent nearly an entire month marching toward the coast ensured
that awareness of his campaign, and an understanding of his salt gathering as an assertion of
injustice, would be widespread.7 The importance of civil disobedience actively communicating
a perception of injustice is evident in theorists’ general rejection of covert law breaking as civil
disobedience.8 Owing to civil disobedience being “a mode of address taking place in the public
forum,” and thus requiring some level of comprehensibility,9 it is not uncommon for protesters
planning civil disobedience to publicly announce the details of their plan in advance of any lawbreaking.
7
Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, Inc., 1979), 184.
Paul Harris cites the examples of sheltering and transporting slaves in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law. Paul
Harris, “Introduction” in Civil Disobedience, ed. Paul Harris (1989), 2-4. See also John Rawls, “Definition and
Justification of Civil Disobedience,” in Civil Disobedience in Focus, ed. Hugo A. Bedau (London: Routledge, 1991),
106.
9
Rawls, “Definition and Justification of Civil Disobedience,” in Civil Disobedience in Focus, ed. Hugo A. Bedau, 112.
8
6
There are two underlying assumptions in the focus on civil disobedience as a mode of
public address. First, civil disobedience serves as a call for sympathy and consideration since
the protesters voluntarily face the repressive capacity of the state in their campaign for justice.
In the Rawlsian conception of civil disobedience, broad public awareness of the protesters’
claims increases the likelihood of the government restoring justice and doing so without
resorting to repressive force against the law breakers.10 Second, publicly announcing a planned
act of civil disobedience implicitly assures both the broader community and the authorities of
the protesters’ peaceful intentions. By allowing the authorities to preemptively mobilize in
response to the threatened law breaking, those engaged in preannounced civil disobedience
are indirectly renouncing violence as a political tool.
Theorists continue to debate whether or not violence could ever be a legitimate tool of
civil disobedience.11 Terminological arguments against violent civil disobedience are often
based on the incivility of violence.12 Rawls, for instance, insists that interfering with the rights
of others, which is entailed in the use of violence, obscures “the civilly disobedient quality of
one’s act.”13 Assertions that civil disobedience must always be civil can be countered simply by
reference to the definition of “civil” as it is used in the original title of Thoreau’s essay,
Resistance to Civil Government. When separated from the notion of civil conduct and viewed
10
Vinit Haksar, Civil Disobedience, Threats and Offers: Gandhi and Rawls (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), 6.
John Morreall cites multiple theorists allowing for violence in civil disobedience, including Stuart Brown, Rex
Martin, Michael Bayles, Berel Lang, and Christian Bay. See John Morreal, “The Justifiability of Violent Civil
Disobedience,” in Civil Disobedience in Focus, ed. Hugo A. Bedau, 130-131.
12
Bedau, for one, explicitly makes his argument for requiring non-violence a terminological one. Hugo A. Bedau,
“On Civil Disobedience,” The Journal of Philosophy 58, no. 21 (December 1961): 656.
13
Brownlee, “Civil Disobedience,” 4.
11
7
simply as protest aimed specifically at the government, absolute non-violence need no longer
be a definitional requirement of civil disobedience.
Part of the disagreement over the relationship between civil disobedience and violence
is exacerbated by the entanglement of the definitional criteria for civil disobedience with the
criteria used for its moral justification. Some paradigms of civil disobedience requiring nonviolence simultaneously define violence so as to make it morally unjustifiable in all
circumstances. One moral proposition used to bolster this conception asserts that “it is better
to suffer violence than to inflict it.”14 This notion, however, fails to consider the possibility that
some instances of violence may be morally justified, depending on the severity of the injustice
being opposed, the type of violence used, and the degree to which the violence is applied.15
While adherence to non-violence is popularly viewed as a defining characteristic of civil
disobedience, and one that provides a significant aura of morality, the boundaries between
violence and coercion are not always agreed upon. Because some definitions of violence
include any act that diminishes the autonomy of others,16 the coerciveness that gives certain
acts of civil disobedience their power also means they can be classified as essentially violent.
The rationale behind King’s use of civil disobedience was coercive in that it sought “to
create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to
negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”17 The Birmingham lunch counter sit-in campaign of
14
Bedau, “On Civil Disobedience,” 661.
Harris, “Introduction: The Nature and Moral Justification of Civil Disobedience,” 10–12.
16
John Morreal, “The Justifiability of Violent Civil Disobedience,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy VI, no. 1 (March
1976): 37.
17
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in Civil Disobedience, ed. Paul Harris (Wellington, New
Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington, 1989), 59.
15
8
1963 applied non-violent direct action tactics in which protesters used their physical bodies as
tools to influence the actions of others.
Another non-violent tactic involves the passive
formation of a bodily obstruction for the express purpose of effectively barring access to a
particular place or object, such as when a large number of protesters simultaneously occupy
public or private spaces for extended periods of time. The coerciveness of these actions lie in
the necessity of responding to the protesters’ continued physical presence18 and could be
called “a contest of force, even though the only force you may be resorting to is that of the
inertia of your own body.”19 The disagreement over the boundaries between, and justness of,
the various degrees of violence is only exacerbated by the ambiguous historical record of those
most closely associated with non-violent civil disobedience.
In his essay, A Plea for Captain John Brown, Thoreau condoned the use of violent force
when the gravity of an injustice warranted it.20 Similarly, Gandhi insisted on the moral
superiority of brave action over cowardice, going so far as to advocate violence rather than
weakness in the face of evil:
…[I]t is better to be violent, if there is violence in our breasts, than to put on the cloak of
non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is
hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the
impotent.21
18
Gene Sharp, “The Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion,” Global Nonviolent Action Database, accessed
June 9, 2014, http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/browse_methods.
19
Harry Prosch, “Limits to the Moral Claim in Civil Disobedience,” Ethics, LXXV (1965), pp. 104-105, quoted in John
Morreall, “The Justifiability of Violent Civil Disobedience,” in Civil Disobedience in Focus, ed. Hugo A. Bedau, 135.
20
Laudani, Disobedience in Western Political Thought: A Genealogy, 92
21
Mohandis Gandhi, “Harijan,” October 21, 1939, and Non-violence in Peace and War, (Ahmedabad: Navajivan,
1948-1949), vol. II, 159, in Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 135.
9
To understand Gandhi’s justification of violence, one must also understand, at the
broadest level, his notion of satyāgraha. As an all-encompassing philosophy of non-violent
resistance that roughly translates to “adherence to Truth”, satyāgraha requires inner
conviction, self-improvement, and the recognition of the dignity of all forms of life. This
manner of living, when combined with direct confrontation of societal evils, produces what
Gandhi called the “non-violence of the brave”. This theory does not prescribe particular
outcomes but solely concerns itself with the process through which a truly just society is
produced.
Rather than being instrumental, Gandhi’s satyāgraha was intended to be constitutive of
an ideal system determined not by any particular conception of an ideal society but by the
sociopolitical application of the principles upon which satyāgraha is based. Unfortunately,
Gandhi’s philosophical framework was never fully developed, perhaps owing to his overriding
concern with addressing evil rather than theorizing justice.22 Gandhi did, however, contrast the
principled non-violence of satyāgraha, which he deemed a viable alternative to political
violence, with non-violence as a purely tactical strategy.23 This is all to say that Gandhi’s
apparent acceptance of violence needs to be understood as an admonishment against inaction,
cowardice, and non-violence unaccompanied by the principles of satyāgraha.
Gandhi’s later appraisals of the non-violent campaigns in India reveal his dissatisfaction
with their lack of principled action. He notes that Indian non-violence had been “inspired by
22
Gene Sharp, “Review of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict by Joan V. Bondurant,” The Journal of
Conflict Resolution, vol. 3, no. 4, (Dec. 1959), 401-410.
23
Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 220-221.
10
violence and not by regard for the [people] whom they should convert” using satyāgraha.”24
This moral contradiction could result in devastating consequences, Gandhi argued:
[The] non-violence of the weak and the helpless…will never take us to our goal and, if
long practiced, may even render us for ever unfit for self-government…It has been
suggested that when we have our independence riots and the like will not occur. This
seems to me to be an empty hope, if in the course of the struggle for freedom we do
not understand and use the technique of non-violent action in every conceivable
circumstance.25
Despite the lack of a complete theory of non-violence and its applications, the principled nature
of Gandhi’s approach is evident. In distinguishing between satyāgraha and non-violence as an
undesirable “weapon of the weak”26, he made clear his view that conscientiousness should play
an integral role in non-violence.
Like Gandhi, King’s activism prevented him from fully developing his theoretical
framework for civil disobedience. In his final book, King noted both the effectiveness of nonviolent protest and that he “did not have leisure to probe for a deeper understanding of its laws
and lines of development.”27
The complexity and seeming contradictions within both the history of and academic
literature on civil disobedience make any context-driven theorizing of civil disobedience a
difficult and time-consuming task, one few activists would choose over concrete action.
24
Mohandas Gandhi, Harijan, August 31, 1947, and Non-violence in Peace and War, II, p. 289, quoted in Sharp,
Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 100.
25
Gandhi, Harijan, April 2, 1938, and Non-violence in Peace and War, I, p. 136, quoted in Sharp, Gandhi as a
Political Strategist, 101.
26
Gandhi, Harijan, July 27, 1947, and Non-violence in Peace and War, II, p. 276, quoted in Sharp, Gandhi as a
Political Strategist, 100.
27
Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 137,
quoted in Herbert J. Storing, “The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” in Civil Disobedience in Focus, ed. Hugo Adam
Bedau, 100.
11
Because practitioners of civil disobedience are most immediately concerned with addressing
injustice rather than thoroughly elaborating the logical and moral consistency of their actions,
and understandably so, the reduction of civil disobedience to strategizing is unsurprising.
The promulgation of an explicitly instrumentalist approach to civil disobedience, one
that diminishes the distinction between civil disobedience that is done conscientiously and civil
disobedience that is used primarily because of its power to coerce, is in large part a result of the
work of political theorist Gene Sharp, whose pragmatic approach to non-violence incorporates
elements of military tactics.28 Sharp’s research spans half a century and “excludes ethical
considerations and cultural particularities” while incorporating “value-neutrality, scientific rigor,
and [an] instrumentalist nature,” 29 earning him comparisons to both Machiavelli 30 and
Clausewitz.,31 His writings, available in over 30 languages, have been cited as possible
influences on protesters in a number of different countries, including the Philippines, Palestine,
Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Egypt, and the United States.32 Several of his works include a
compiled list of 198 non-violent tactics, including civil disobedience of either “illegitimate” or
“neutral” laws.33 Sharp himself has noted that he wrote the how-to guide “From Dictatorship
to Democracy” in the early 1990s at the request of Burmese activists.34 One of Sharp’s earlier
28
Kurt Schock, “The practice and study of civil resistance,” Journal of Peace Research, 50(3), 279.
Sean Chabot and Majid Sharifi, “The Violence of Nonviolence: Problematizing Nonviolent Resistance in Iran and
Egypt,” Societies Without Borders, vol. 8, no. 2 (2013) 205-232.
30
John-Paul Flintoff, “Gene Sharp: The Machiavelli of Nonviolence,” The New Statesman, January 3, 2013,
Accessed February 8, 2015, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/your-democracy/2013/01/gene-sharpmachiavelli-non-violence
31
Thomas Weber, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004), p. 232.
32
Schock, “The practice and study of civil resistance,” Journal of Peace Research, 280-281.
33
Gene Sharp, “The Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion,” Global Nonviolent Action Database,
http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/browse_methods.
34
Amitabh Pal, “Gene Sharp Interview,” The Progressive, February 28, 2007, Accessed February 7, 2015.
http://www.progressive.org/mag/intv0307
29
12
works, however, focused explicitly on what he viewed as strategic aspects of Gandhi’s civil
disobedience campaigns. In the concluding remarks to that book, Sharp intentionally inverts
Gandhi’s conception of just means being constitutive of an undetermined just end by asserting
that, “[T]he behavior of nonviolent actionists who believe in principled nonviolence and the
behavior of those who use the technique as an effective means to a given end become virtually
identical.”35
This instrumentalist concept of non-violence disregards one of the most important
considerations in the literature on civil disobedience. A large impetus for theorizing civil
disobedience, as Storing notes, has been the perception that civil disobedience is often an
“attempt to combine, on the level of principle, revolution and conventional political action.”36
Many civil disobedience campaigns, including King’s, tend to obscure the necessary distinction
between the “reform of a political system that is fundamentally sound, although unjust in some
very important particulars, and the overturning of one that is corrupt at heart.”37 According to
Rawls, the right to revolution against an unjust state is a given, while a right to civil
disobedience exists only in a nearly just society.
The announcement of plans for civil
disobedience is a necessary means of addressing the government that has temporarily and
unknowingly abandoned its state of justice. It also allows the government to satisfactorily
resolve the incongruence, thereby negating the need to actually break the law in protest.
Rawls’ requirement of non-violence on the part of the protesters preserves the justness of the
35
Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, 295.
Herbert J. Storing, “The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” in Civil Disobedience in Focus, ed. Hugo Adam Bedau,
86.
37
Storing, “The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” in Civil Disobedience in Focus, ed. Hugo Adam Bedau, 91.
36
13
state’s claim as the sole wielder of legitimate force and the arbiter of justice.38 But despite
Thoreau and Gandhi both accepting the punishment for their law breaking, neither accepted
the ultimate legitimacy of their respective governments. Thoreau explicitly cited the right to
rebellion against an unjust government and declared that he had already begun to “quietly
declare war with the State.”39 Similarly, Gandhi thoroughly rejected the British colonial
authorities’ legitimacy to rule over India.
It is my contention that the problematic association between non-violent civil
disobedience and revolution stems, in part, from the lack of a clear definition distinguishing
between the two. If justifications and definitions are independent, the objective characteristics
of civil disobedience are relatively easy to identify; the act protests an injustice perpetrated by
the government, and it does so either directly - by breaking the law being protested - or
indirectly - by breaking a different law.
The lack of any further defining characteristics
complicates attempts to differentiate civil disobedience from a “non-extreme tactic for
revolution”.40 Those remaining definitional characteristics necessarily center on the protesters’
intentions and perceptions. This places the burden of differentiation on practitioners who must
defend their civil disobedience but must do so without the benefit of a coherent body of civil
disobedience theory.
Although challenging the government’s role as arbiter of justice is most directly done
through the use of violence or revolutionary rhetoric, Gene Sharp’s instrumentalist approach
38
Rawls, “Definition and Justification of Civil Disobedience,” in Civil Disobedience in Focus, ed. Hugo Adam Bedau.
Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience,” (1849).
40
Steven R. Schlesinger, “Civil Disobedience: The Problem of Selective Obedience to Law,” Hastings Constitutional
Law Quarterly 3 (1975): 947–948.
39
14
does so by disregarding ethical considerations and focusing instead on the expedient
attainment of a given goal through civil disobedience. This approach assumes the practitioner’s
assessment of injustice is incontrovertible by leaving justice out of the equation. The resulting
misrepresentation, however, of civil disobedience as ipso facto justified should not necessarily
be viewed as intentionally disingenuous.
The combination of romanticized histories,
incongruous theories, and an urgency to act reinforces the practitioner’s sincere presumption
of justice in regard to their own actions. But the uncritical valorization of civil disobedience as a
protest tactic is indefensible and exacerbates the conceptual entanglement with revolutionary
action. This is precisely the case with regard to Sharp’s inversion of constitutive action as put
forward by Gandhi. When civil disobedience is promoted simply as an expedient means to
achieve one’s goal, it undermines the notion of conscientiousness by intentionally denying it as
a factor in the use civil disobedience.
An understanding of this problematic development in how civil disobedience is
sometimes implemented, and how this shift distorts the perception and theorizing of justice
and civil disobedience generally, allows for a more thorough and precise understanding of the
antagonism that sometimes follows acts of civil disobedience. After outlining the basic political
context of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, I will examine the development of Occupy
Central and the student occupation in terms of their implications for a conceptual
understanding of the critical response to civil disobedience.
15
Civil Disobedience in Hong Kong
Constitutional Background
As of 2008, it could be said that residents of Hong Kong have enjoyed high levels of personal
freedom and civil liberties despite living in a semi-democracy under the ultimate authority of
the People’s Republic of China (China).41 Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the constitutional document
negotiated between Britain and China prior to the July 1, 1997 handover of sovereignty,
expressly protects these civil liberties, including the “freedom of association, of assembly, of
procession and of demonstration” mentioned in Article 27. While the Basic Law also dictates
the selection process for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Article 45 states that the “ultimate aim is
the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage.”42 Pro-democracy activists, seizing on
this inclusion by the central government, have exercised their civil liberties by repeatedly
protesting for a speedy transition to universal suffrage. Despite Hong Kong law requiring
permits for demonstration, lawful protests calling for democratic reforms have become a
frequent, almost ritualistic, occurrence in Hong Kong. Every year on July 1st, the anniversary of
the handover of sovereignty in 1997, lawful pro-democracy protests have taken place with
varying levels of attendance.
There have also been several unlawful protests in Hong Kong since the handover. In
2003, half a million people protested against a proposed anti-subversion law; that proposed
reform was quickly retracted by the government. Several years late, as part of the anti-
41
A portion of Hong Kong’s government is democratically elected and allows oppositional parties and the public to
formally and legally express their political views. Ma Ngok, “Civil Society and Democratization in Hong Kong:
Paradox and Duality,” Taiwan Journal of Democracy 4, no. 2 (2008): 162.
42
“The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China,” accessed
November 11, 2013, http://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclawtext/.
16
capitalist “Occupy Wall Street” movement that began in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, protesters
occupied the public passageway in the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building in
Central for nearly 11 months, making it one of the longest encampments in the “Occupy Wall
Street” movement.
The tension over electoral reform was renewed in 2004 when China’s central
government exercised authority of interpretation over Hong Kong’s Basic Law, explicitly
outlawing universal suffrage for the 2007 elections. The central government added another
interpretation to the Basic Law in 2007. Although democracy activists, the news media, and
many academic sources have claimed that this interpretation amounted to a “promise” of
universal suffrage for 2017, the legal reality is that 2017 was the earliest date for universal
suffrage allowed by Hong Kong’s constitution. According to the Basic Law, for electoral reform
to move forward, the Chief Executive must report any proposed electoral reform to China’s
central government and then submit the proposal to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council which
must endorse the proposal by a two-thirds majority. The Chief Executive must then consent to
the reform and report it a second time to China’s central government for approval. The 2007
decisions states that, “If no amendment is made to the method for selecting the Chief
Executive…the method for selecting the Chief Executive used for the preceding term shall
continue to apply.”43
43
“The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.” Chapter IX,
Annex III, Instrument 21.
17
Since the central government also appoints Hong Kong’s Chief Executive after a
selection process dominated by pro-establishment elites in Hong Kong,44 it is reasonable to
assume that any electoral reforms the executive government presents to the central
government for approval would not diverge significantly from what the Chinese government
finds acceptable. Similarly, half of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council is comprised of functional
constituencies rather than popularly elected, geographically based representatives.
This
presents yet another obstacle to sweeping electoral reform made in accordance with the
procedures established by the Basic Law, since the legislature must endorse electoral reform
proposals by a two-thirds majority.
Given the central government’s official interpretations and the enshrinement of
“gradual and orderly progress” alongside the “ultimate aim” of universal suffrage,45 it is
apparent that the Basic Law serves as a formal check against popular pressures for radical
change. This paradoxical situation, in which pro-democracy activists are encouraged to push
for universal suffrage while their efforts to see it implemented fully and immediately are
simultaneously thwarted, may have been instrumental in facilitating the escalation of prodemocracy protest tactics beyond the standard legal demonstrations.
Occupy Central
Professor Tai’s original call for civil disobedience, in a January 2013 article in the Hong Kong
Economic Journal titled “公民抗命的最大殺傷力武器” (“Civil Disobedience: the Most Lethal
44
The Chief Executive is first elected by an electoral college of 1,200 voters chosen from among the functional
constituencies. Ibid., Chapter II, Article 15.
45
“The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.” Chapter II,
Article 15.
18
Weapon”), proposed a passive occupation of Hong Kong’s Central business district by 10,000
demonstrators on July 1, 2014, the anniversary of the British handover of sovereignty to
China.46 Shortly after his publication appeared, Tai noted that civil disobedience would be used
without hesitation when necessary while also stressing both a “higher goal of achieving justice”
and the practical aspect of forcing China’s central government to “weigh its options.” 47 A
formal organization soon took shape to manage the planning efforts, with Tai taking the lead
alongside two other prominent community figures. This group, dubbed Occupy Central with
Love and Peace, hoped to use the threat of mass civil disobedience to pressure the Hong Kong
government into enacting sweeping electoral reforms that would allow for full and direct
elections of the Chief Executive and Legislative Council members as soon as legally possible.48
The homepage of Occupy Central’s official English website bore this quote from Martin
Luther King, Jr.: “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” 49 It also featured an
official manifesto listing the organization’s “three fundamental convictions.”50 First, Hong
Kong’s electoral system must meet international standards regarding universal suffrage, the
right to vote, and the right to stand for election. Occupy Central specifically opposed the non-
46
Benny Tai, “公民抗命的最大殺傷力武器,” Occupy Central with Love and Peace, accessed March 17, 2014,
http://oclp.hk/index.php?route=occupy/article_detail&article_id=23
47
Joshua But, “Law Expert Plans a Blockade for Vote; HKU Professor Benny Tai Is Planning an Exercise in Civil
Disobedience to Send a Message to Beijing about Its Universal Suffrage Pledge,” South China Morning Post,
February 16, 2013.
48
“Half of Hongkongers Oppose Occupy Central’s Campaign for Universal Suffrage,” South China Morning Post,
accessed October 10, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1295910/occupy-centralsurvey-what-people-think-protest-campaign.
49
This quote is not found in the official Cantonese website for Occupy Central. See Occupy Central with Love and
Peace, accessed September 17, 2014, http://oclphkenglish.wordpress.com/.
50
Occupy Central with Love and Peace, “Manifesto,” Occupy Central with Love and Peace, accessed May 7, 2014,
http://oclp.hk/index.php?route=occupy/eng_detail&eng_id=9 and Occupy Central with Love and Peace,
“Frequently Asked Questions,” Occupy Central with Love and Peace, accessed May 7, 2014,
https://oclphkenglish.wordpress.com/about-2/faq/.
19
representative selection committee responsible for choosing Hong Kong’s Chief Executive.
Second, proposals for Hong Kong’s electoral system should be created through democratic
deliberation amongst the region’s citizens. These ideals informed Occupy Central’s choice to
hold public deliberative meetings and an informal public referendum regarding the
organization’s official electoral reform proposal. The impetus for actual civil disobedience
would be the government’s rejection of this democratically derived proposal. Lastly, the
principle of absolute non-violence was to be upheld by anyone engaged in civil disobedience.
In fact, Tai claimed non-violence as a definitional requirement for civil disobedience.51 A later
section distinguished between two types of protesters, noting that some could submit to arrest
without filing a defense in trial while others could “carry out the acts of civil disobedience
without giving themselves up to the authorities.”52
Shortly after Tai’s January 2013 publication, the organization held several public
meetings in an attempt to share basic information regarding civil disobedience with Hong
Kong’s citizens and to recruit participants for the actual act of civil disobedience. A later round
of public meetings served as the platform for internal deliberations. As a result of these
deliberations, the proposed timeline for Occupy Central was officially revised. Rather than
occupy the Central business district on the 2014 anniversary of the handover of sovereignty as
originally planned, the group decided to initiate action in the event that China’s central
government formally rejected the group’s official proposal for electoral reform, which was to
51
Benny Yiu-ting Tai, "Occupy Central Won’t Occur in Next Few Days: Tai," September 2, 2014,
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/hong-kong-s-benny-tai-on-occupy-central-protestC3KJISSLSmy0JGO2YczziQ.html.
52
Occupy Central with Love and Peace, “Manifesto,” Occupy Central with Love and Peace, accessed May 7, 2014,
http://oclp.hk/index.php?route=occupy/eng_detail&eng_id=9
20
be determined through broad consensus.53 Fifteen different plans were put forward by various
political parties, organizations, and alliances taking part in the deliberative process.54
After pledged civil disobedience participants voted for their preferred plan, Occupy
Central presented the top three proposals to the general public for an informal referendum
vote.55 By allowing all eligible Hong Kong voters to each vote on the proposal he or she felt the
organization should officially endorse, Occupy Central claimed a level of “civic authorization”
for the civil disobedience campaign.56 Each of the three electoral reform proposals presented
to the public contained some element which would have allowed Hong Kong voters to
nominate candidates for Chief Executive, a suggestion China’s central government had explicitly
refused to entertain. The central government’s decision was expected on August 31; Occupy
Central set the date of civil disobedience for October 1, which is also the anniversary of the
founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
The Umbrella Movement
Two prominent student groups participating in the Occupy Central deliberations had earlier
announced their intentions to boycott classes at dozens of colleges and universities if the
Chinese government rejected Occupy Central’s demands for universal suffrage and public
53
Benny Yiu-ting Tai, “Seven Components of ‘Occupy Central with Love and Peace,’” May 20, 2013, 3–4,
http://www.hkdf.org/download/Benny_Tai_7_Compenents_of_Occupy_Central.pdf.
54
At least some pan-democratic supporters of Occupy Central only reluctantly participated in these deliberations.
One lawmaker specifically noted concerns over the plan’s details. Other lawmakers argued that ordinary citizens
would not likely support law breaking. Joshua But and Colleen Lee, “Blockade Plans Gets Democrats’ Support,”
South China Morning Post, February 19, 2013.
55
Suzanne Pepper, “Complications for Occupy Central,” China Elections and Governance, May 15, 2014.
56
Occupy Central with Love and Peace, “Frequently Asked Questions,” Occupy Central with Love and Peace,
accessed May 7, 2014, https://oclphkenglish.wordpress.com/about-2/faq/.
21
nomination of candidates.
Several weeks after the central government announced its
conservative plans for reform, which retained the selection committee but granted universal
suffrage with the stipulation that all Chief Executive candidates “love China and love Hong
Kong,” thousands of students began their boycott on September 22 and attended various civic
assemblies organized by the student groups.
On the evening of September 26, as an assembly near Hong Kong’s Legislative Council
Complex was coming to a close, Joshua Wong, the student leader for one of the groups, urged
those in attendance to “retake” the government complex that had been fenced off several
months earlier. Dozens of students scaled the police barriers, and after a two day sit-in
involving more than 100 students and a growing throng of supporters, Hong Kong police
attempted to disperse some protesters with tear gas, prompting one of the student groups to
unsuccessfully propose a withdrawal from the protest.”57 Following the use of tear gas, Tai
officially announced the early commencement of Occupy Central’s civil disobedience campaign.
Some student protesters, however, expressed distrust towards the leadership of Occupy
Central and the pan-democratic parties that had historically played a major role in the prodemocracy movement.58 This unease reflects a broader and long-standing suspicion generally
felt by Hong Kongers toward politics and political parties.59
57
Au Loong Yu, “Occupy Central--What’s Next for the Hong Kong Democracy Movement? A Brief Observation on
the Current Movement,” translated by Bai Ruixue, New Politics, October 1, 2014, Accessed February 8, 2015,
http://newpol.org/content/occupy-central-what%E2%80%99s-next-hong-kong-democracy-movement-briefobservation-current-movement.
58
Ibid.
59
Even prior to the 1997 handover, research has pointed to this particular perception of politics among by public in
Hong Kong. Lee and Chan point out several such analyses by Lau Siu-kai and Kuan Hsin-chi. Francis L. F. Lee and
Joseph M. Chan, “Making Sense of Participation: The Political Culture of Pro-democracy Demonstrators in Hong
Kong,” The China Quarterly, March 2008, vol. 193, 88-89.
22
Lasting approximately eleven weeks, the occupation was composed of several selfcontained, decentralized protest communities. First aid supplies, clothing, food, water, and cell
phone battery chargers were all donated by supporters in the community. With their most
basic needs met, the mostly student protesters were free to engage in various communal
festivities; alternative libraries, study areas, protest teach-ins, and art workshops were all
available.
Creativity and artistic expression have played major roles in the occupation.60
Participants also adopted several popular countercultural references. Some hung banners with
the English words “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the song with that title in the musical
adaptation of Les Misérables. A group of Hong Kong protesters also sang the Cantonese version
of the song during the early days of the occupation. In the musical, this song is song while
protesters ready themselves for the June Rebellion of 1830s Paris. Some Hong Kong protesters
donned t-shirts with the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary
and major figure in the Cuban Revolution. Others wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in
the film V for Vendetta, the protagonist of which is an anarchist revolutionary. Guy Fawkes, of
course, took part in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 that aimed to blow up England’s House of
Lords.
Unlike Occupy Central, the student protesters raised multiple grievances rather than
focusing specifically on the lack of universal suffrage. Extreme economic inequality has been an
increasingly pressing problem in Hong Kong. One local trade union, while expressing support
60
Mary Louise Schumacher, “Q&A with Charlotte Frost about the Umbrella Revolution,” Journal Sentinel,
November 6, 2014, Accessed February 6, 2015. http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/arts/qa-with-charlottefrost-about-the-umbrella-revolution-b99385857z1-281808161.html, and “The enchanting art of Hong Kong’s
Umbrella Revolution,” Journal Sentinel, November 6, 2014, Accessed February 6, 2015,
http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/arts/the-enchanting-art-of-hong-kongs-umbrella-revolutionb99385524z1-281848021.html
23
for the protesters, also called for regulations aimed at remedying particular economic problems.
Additionally, the increasingly prominent call to recognize Hong Kong identity as distinct from
that of mainland Chinese was evident in some groups of protesters.
Tensions with the
mainland have been exacerbated by the growing influence in Hong Kong of the central
government and mainland Chinese tourists.
Discussion
The idealistic atmosphere of the student occupation points to its similarities with prefigurative
politics, in which political actors “attempt to create the kind of social relations that [they want]
within the very process of struggling.”61 As Nicholas Smaligo, a philosopher whose work
includes analyses of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, notes in an interview regarding the
Hong Kong student protests, the communitarian equality and decentralization of the student
protests in Hong Kong were, however imperfectly, an exercise in “decision-making structures
that might replace those of capitalism and the state.”62 While the student protesters were not
seeking to actually implement radical communitarianism in Hong Kong, the organizational
characteristics of the occupation, the presence of objections to economic inequality, the
students’ distrust of institutionalized political parties, and the demands for universal suffrage
do, in fact, point to a desire for a more egalitarian society.
The absence of shared political/normative ideals among the protesters, however,
undermines this characterization of the occupation. Applying the label of “prefigurative” may
61
Brown, L. A., “Interview with Nicholas Smaligo,” Featured Philosophers, Souther Illinois University Department of
Philosophy, Accessed February 6, 2015, http://cola.siu.edu/philosophy/featured-profiles/interview-smaligo.php
62
Ibid.
24
grant the Umbrella Movement a collective intentionality that simply wasn’t there. Since the
occupation included three separate encampment sites (in Admiralty, Causeway, and Mong Kok),
each with their own distinct demographic, any broad account of the movement necessarily
glosses over the internal divisions present among the protesters.
A first glance, the occupation also appears to align with Gandhi’s notion of satyāgraha in
which conscientious non-violent struggle is constitutive of an ideal and just society. Gandhi
held this form of action as vastly superior to instrumental non-violence used simply as a tactical
strategy.
A reading of the occupation from this perspective, however, would require a
separation between the actualized protest and the circumstances through which it arose.
It is my contention that the student occupation cannot be viewed as entirely
unconnected to Occupy Central. Without Occupy Central serving as the mode of public address
through which the grievance and the goals of civil disobedience were made known, it seems
unlikely that the student protests would have played out as they did. Given the extended
public awareness of plans for an impending occupation of the Central business district, the
general public was able to consider their own thoughts on the matter, and the authorities in
Hong Kong were able to discuss, prepare, and organize what they deemed to be an appropriate
response. A spontaneous illegal occupation of three major thoroughfares might have faced
even more public resistance and state repression than the Umbrella Movement actually did. Of
course, this is counterfactual hypothesizing, but it serves to causally connect Occupy Central
and the Umbrella Movement while not overlooking the distinction between them.
Occupy Central’s attempt to utilize democratic procedures during the deliberations also
appears to be a form of constitutive prefiguration albeit one that fell short in terms of
25
representativeness and the claimed broad civil consensus, given the progressively exclusionary
deliberation mechanisms. Unsurprisingly, individuals strongly in support of particular and
drastic reforms proved instrumental in refining the organization’s specific proposal for electoral
reform. While any organization was welcome to submit a proposal, only those members who
pledged to participate in the actual civil disobedience were allowed to vote on the fifteen
proposals during the third deliberation day. This resulted in those fifteen proposals being
whittled down to the three most far-reaching. Immediately following this internal vote, some
members of one group within Occupy Central accused the more radical groups of reneging on
their promises to support a particular moderate proposal.
63
This resulted in
disenfranchisement among some pro-democrats which, in turn, weakened the campaign’s
broader moral appeal. This entire process, of course, was premised on the presumption that
civil disobedience, as proposed by Tai, was justified in pursuit of electoral reform. Hong
Kongers who disagreed with this presumption had no incentive to participate nor any power to
change the focus of the deliberations.
After the internal deliberations, all Hong Kong residents were given the opportunity to
vote on the three proposals favored by those who also agreed to participate in the planned civil
disobedience. This informal public referendum, in which eight hundred thousand residents cast
a vote, was initiated by Occupy Central in order to “foster a civil consensus [that would] serve
to authorize the pan-democratic parties to negotiate with the government.”64 However, much
63
Tanna Chong, “Radicals Admit Moderate Proposals Would Give Voters ‘Genuine Choice,’” South China Morning
Post, May 8, 2014, http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1507306/radicals-admit-moderate-proposalswould-give-voters-genuine-choice.
64
Occupy Central with Love and Peace, "10 Basic Facts about OCLP,” Occupy Central with Love and Peace, accessed
May 7, 2014, http://oclp.hk/index.php?route=occupy/article_detail&article_id=119.
26
like the argument that Hong Kong’s Chief Executive elections lack legitimacy owing to the
limited candidate choices available to voters,65 so too did the Occupy Central civil referendum
lack legitimacy.
One anti-Occupy organization pointed out that a “relatively small and
unrepresentative group of political activists…effectively disenfranchised a large section of the
community who do not want to be led down a path towards direct confrontation with the
central government.”66
This echoes Gandhi’s own admonishment against indifference towards the community:
“Those whom you seek to depose are better armed and infinitely better organized...You may
not care for you own lives, but you dare not disregard those of your countrymen who have no
desire to die a martyr’s death.”67 Gandhi’s satyāgraha was itself the constituent element of a
just end. It did not work toward a specific, predetermined goal assumed to be just. Given the
division within Hong Kong regarding the use of civil disobedience and within the pro-democratic
community regarding the specific goal, Occupy Central disregarded and disenfranchised a large
segment of society that also has a stake in the outcome of political reforms.
The
predetermined goal of a particular form of immediate universal suffrage was used to justify the
means by which it might be reached. This is precisely akin to Sharp’s inversion of Gandhi’s
moral rationale and disregards the possibility of working in cooperation with all interested
parties toward changes deemed mutually acceptable.
Hong Kong’s Basic Law allows for
elections via universal suffrage, but it is the responsibility of the government in Hong Kong to
65
It should be noted, however, that at least one pro-democratic politician in Hong Kong has given an opposing
viewpoint on the legitimacy of the current Hong Kong administration. Margaret Ng referred to the 2012 Chief
Executive election as “truly competitive.” Margaret Ng, “Hong Kong’s Democracy Dilemma,” The New York Times,
September 2, 2014, sec. The Opinion Pages, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/opinion/hong-kongsdemocracy-dilemma.html.
66
Chong, “Radicals Admit Moderate Proposals Would Give Voters ‘Genuine Choice.’”
67
Shiri Ram Bakshi, Gandhi and the Congress (New Dehli: Sarup & Sons, 1996), 122.
27
legislate and implement electoral reform. Pro-democratic citizens working toward consensus
on such reform within the framework provided by the Basic Law is not necessarily unjust.
While many activists and Hong Kong residents may not view the plans for civil
disobedience or the student occupation as unjustified and possibly revolutionary, it is quite
understandable that government leaders and conservative residents likely view illegal
obstructive protests as serious and subversive threats. Tai’s early analogy of civil disobedience
as a deadly weapon used the threat of disorder and coercive force in the hopes of achieving
universal suffrage, noting it would “force Beijing to make a choice between economic sacrifices
and political sacrifices.” 68 Some critics in Hong Kong have compared the plan for civil
disobedience to a hostage situation; the comparison may be extreme, but it is not entirely
inaccurate.
The use of coercive and threatening rhetoric, despite non-violence being one of Occupy
Central’s three “fundamental convictions”, further supports the notion that pragmatic
considerations of tactical non-violence supplanted the conscientious principles popularly
associated with civil disobedience.
Furthermore, the theoretical simplification of civil
disobedience is evident in the use of King’s quote about the “moral responsibility to disobey
unjust laws” on Occupy Central’s website; they were protesting the government’s rejection of
their specific proposal for electoral reform, a grievance amenable only to indirect civil
disobedience. They were not explicitly protesting the legal requirement to register political
68
Jeffrey Lam, “Threat of Mass Protest Is No Way to Begin Talks; Jeffrey Lam Urges Pan-Democrats to Rethink the
Economic Suicide That Is Occupy Central,” South China Morning Post, April 17, 2013.
28
demonstrations. If they had been, they could speak of disobeying an unjust law through direct
civil disobedience.
Given the ambiguous definitional criteria of civil disobedience and the general
admiration for historical figures such as Gandhi and King,69 it is easy to understand why civil
disobedience in pursuit of a just goal would be viewed by supporters of that goal as also being
justified. There is obviously nothing inherently unjust about universal suffrage for Hong Kong.
However, the use of unlawful coercive protest in pursuit of a narrowly defined version of
universal suffrage which does not represent a consensus among the broader population should
be viewed as unjust. This perception is particularly warranted among those in Hong Kong who
would prefer to incrementally move towards universal suffrage, in accordance with the Basic
Law, rather than forcefully push through sweeping reforms via confrontational protest.
As noted earlier, the right to revolution against an unjust government is often assumed.
But the degree of unjustness that warrants any type of revolutionary action and, just as
importantly, who makes this determination are unclear. Despite the international media’s
embrace of the phrase “Umbrella Revolution”, nearly all Hong Kong protesters have explicitly
rejected that categorization.70 While this may reflect a genuine belief among protesters in the
non-revolutionary nature of the demonstrations, the conceptual entanglement of civil
69
Anecdotally, one particular t-shirt being sold in January 2014 and worn by Leung “Long Hair” Kwok-hung, a
leading activist and founding member of the League of Social Democrats, showed pictures of Nelson Mandela,
Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandis Gandhi, and Aung San Suu Kyi, with the words “Civil Disobedience”. Matthew
Bell, “A veteran Hong Kong protest leader says this isn’t a revolution – yet”, Public Radio International, October 6,
2014, Accessed February 20, 2015, http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-06/veteran-hong-kong-protest-leadersays-isnt-revolution-yet.
70
Ibid.
29
disobedience and revolutionary action does not allow for a clear and definitive pronouncement
of what exactly occurred in Hong Kong.
This analysis also does not claim that the broader campaign was ultimately a failure,
despite the fact that it did not secure the goal of immediate electoral reform. One goal of
Occupy Central was to “promote public engagement”.71 And while Occupy Central’s internal
procedures for developing an official proposal for electoral reform prevented the group from
securing the hoped for broadly representative outcome, the open deliberations and city-wide
informal referendum likely served as preparatory exercises for future generations of politicallyminded Hong Kong residents. Clearly, the threat of mass civil disobedience was influential in
stoking the debate around electoral reform in Hong Kong and civic participation. The threat
also mobilized both the pan-democratic political organizations which supported civil
disobedience and the pro-establishment side seeking to counter it. The disenfranchisement of
those opposed to direct confrontation with the central government, however, may have set
Hong Kong politics on a new and unfortunate course. While Hong Kongers have historically
been viewed as depoliticized or apathetic,72 this will likely no longer be the case. The younger
generations in Hong Kong may grow increasingly distrustful of political parties while politics in
the region becoming increasingly polarized and adversarial.
71
Jeffie Lam, “‘We Do What We Say’: Occupy Central Set the Record Straight after Benny Tai Interview,” South
China Morning Post, September 2, 2014.
72
See, for example, Lee and Chan, “Making Sense of Participation,” The China Quarterly, March 2008. See also
Francis L. F. Lee, “Collective Efficacy, Support for Democratization, and Political Participation in Hong Kong,”
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2005).
30
Conclusion
My aim has been to demonstrate, through the example of Hong Kong, how the disjointed
nature of the academic literature on civil disobedience and the instrumentalist approach to
non-violent action interact to further aggravate the gap between theory and practice. The use
of civil disobedience should not necessarily be equated with romanticized and decontextualized
accounts of prominent historical figures such as Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, or
Martin Luther King, Jr. Nor should these men’s famous actions be indiscriminately lumped
together under a catch-all concept of civil disobedience that is presumed justified in all
circumstances. Thoreau’s indirect civil disobedience (or, alternately, conscientious objection)
demonstrated his refusal to be directly implicated in what he saw as fundamentally unjust
actions perpetrated by the state. Gandhi’s direct civil disobedience against the salt monopoly
took place in the context of British colonialization. King’s direct civil disobedience campaign in
Birmingham used coercive direct action to fight against institutionalized segregation.
In Hong Kong, Occupy Central used the threat of indirect civil disobedience through
mass occupation (a form of direct action) of the city’s business district in an attempt to force
the adoption of a particular version of universal suffrage. The methods used to determine this
particular version of universal suffrage were claimed to embody a “broad civil consensus” while
actually disregarding a large portion of the population and systematically favoring the opinion
of a vocal minority group. A few days prior to the proposed date of Occupy Central’s planned
action, members of two Hong Kong student groups trespassed on a previously fenced off area
of a government complex. Police responded with tear gas in an attempt to disperse the
students. What followed was the Umbrella Movement, an eleven week mass occupation of
31
three separate areas in Hong Kong. The occupation, as a whole, lacked shared political or
normative ideals, and individual protesters espoused a variety of goals while often embracing
countercultural symbols unambiguously connected to historical acts of revolution.
The
proponents of Occupy Central and the vast majority of protesters, however, emphatically
rejected the categorization of their actions by critics as revolutionary.
It is my contention that indiscriminately grouping together any and all acts that could be
classified as civil disobedience exacerbates the problem of distinguishing those acts from “nonextreme tactics for revolution.” This conceptual ambiguity is intensified by an instrumentalist
approach which utilizes civil disobedience because of its power to coerce, an approach
advanced by the work of Gene Sharp. This approach stands in opposition to Gandhi’s notions
of satyāgraha which claimed to be constitutive of an ideal system determined not by any
particular idea of justice but by conscientious principles that show regard for one’s community.
Like Gandhi and King, the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong were forced to choose
between further developing a cohesive and contextualized theory of their civil disobedience
and taking action against what they viewed as injustice. What they failed to do was prioritize
the possibility of working with their pro-democratic allies and the remainder of Hong Kong’s
citizens toward some form of mutually recognized justice. The vast majority of people in Hong
Kong, according to opinion polls, generally desire democracy and reject authoritarianism,73 but
likely do not favor achieving democracy through confrontational and coercive law breaking.
73
Wai-man Lam and Hsin-Chi Kuan, “Democratic Transition Frustrated: The Case of Hong Kong,” in How East
Asians View Democracy, edited by Yun-han Chu, Larry Diamond, Andrew J. Nathan, an Doh Chull Shin, Columbia
University Press: New York (2008), 202-204.
32
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