(iPoster) Differences amid Consensus: American and Canadian Support for Hong Kong Protests

• In Event: Poster Session: Various Interesting Foreign Policy

Abstract

To put external pressure on domestic regimes, pro-democracy protesters in authoritarian regimes are incentivized to seek support from the international community as state repression is more likely. However, politicians in democracies do not always support protests abroad. If issues matter, what issues motivate political parties in democracies to support protests abroad? What other factors are more likely to drive politicians to express support for the protests?

Using the 2019 Hong Kong protests as a case study, we conducted text analysis by examining congressional speeches in the 116th United States Congress and parliamentary records in the 42nd to 44th Parliament of Canda. Our topic modeling results demonstrate that both left-wing and right-wing politicians show solidarity with the protests, but they gravitate towards different issues in their speeches. Left-wing politicians are more likely to associate the protests with human rights abuses in China, whereas right-wing politicians tend to emphasize the Chinese Communist Party as a threat to the free world. Additionally, regression results find that senators and senior lawmakers are more likely to deliver speeches on the Hong Kong protests. These findings shed light on the recent policy changes in other democracies toward Hong Kong, and more broadly, carry implications for transnational advocacy in authoritarian states.

Authors

• Kelvin Chun-Man Chan, University of Texas at Dallas

• Theodore Charm, University of Texas at Austin