Beijing’s Different Reactions Towards the Protests in Hong Kong: 2014 vs 2019

• In Event: Mass Mobilization and Protests in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

In 2014 and 2019, two world-renown social movements took place in Hong Kong, the Umbrella Movement, and the Anti-extradition Law Movement. Beijing reacted much more aggressively towards the Anti-extradition Law Movement in 2019 than the Umbrella movement in 2014. What explains Beijing’s differing strategies of controlling information around these two social movements? Drawing on editorials in The People’s Daily and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling, I find that the 2019 movement was framed as a “foreign intervention” and “violent,” but the 2014 movement was framed around “rule of law.” What explains the dramatically different portrayals of these movements? I argue different strategies could be understood through a nationalism-centered framework: The logic suggests the government could arouse a top-down diversionary nationalism, which induces the rally round the flag effect and higher support for Beijing. Notably, the nationalism among the public is both confrontational and consensual. A small sample survey further conducted for the Chinese citizens empirically verifies the mentioned nationalist emotion and higher support towards the CCP. I also find that friction was the main mechanism of censorship in 2014 but flooding replaced its role in 2019.

Author

• Zhenyu Zhang, Cornell University