Introduction

Analysis of the 2014 Umbrella Movement speaks to three strands of academic literature: contentious politics and space, hybrid regimes and democratization, and social movements in China and Hong Kong. Based mostly on fieldwork conducted during the occupation, this book brings together 14 experts who studied the Umbrella Movement from different theoretical perspectives with different methodologies. The studies in the book analyze the occupation as a spontaneous and emotional contentious action, which made good use of public space and creative passion. They also show how civil resistance was shaped and constrained by the hybrid regime and situate the Hong Kong movement in a broader comparative perspective in reference to past student movements in China and protests in Taiwan and Macau.

Correlates of Public Attitudes toward the Umbrella Movement

From the start, the Umbrella Movement failed to win overwhelming public support. Why would many Hong Kong people not endorse a civil disobedience movement aimed at dismantling the exclusionary political order and bringing forth democracy? Based on an original public opinion survey collected during the movement, this article provides preliminary answers to these questions. I find that those who disapproved of the movement are no less politically informed. Instead, three factors were strong predictors of disapproval of the movement: (1) satisfaction with the performance of the chief executive; (2) distrust of democracy as a solution to Hong Kong’s problems; and (3) concern about the negative impact of the protest on the rule of law.

From Political Acquiescence to Civil Disobedience

The outbreak of the Umbrella Movement in 2014 followed decades of futility in the democracy movement. Years of conventional protests and bargaining had failed to bring about full democracy for Hong Kong. The rise of a new political identity and trends of radicalization in social and political movements fuelled the massive civil disobedience campaign. With Beijing handing down an election formula that allowed popular elections only after a Beijing-controlled committee screened the candidates, the opposition was prepared to launch an occupation campaign. Police violence then triggered the spontaneous participation of the masses, culminating in the 79-day occupation that signified a new stage of contentious movements for Hong Kong.

Praxis of Cultivating Civic Spontaneity

This paper aims at conceptualizing the role of co-created artefacts, artistic interventions, aesthetic experience, and the civic-creative learning platform generated in the Umbrella Movement. These aspects of the protest made up what is generally understood as “art,” which we argue acted as a form of civic education during this occupy movement. We explore the triangular relationship between art, politics, and education in the Umbrella Movement through the lens of art theory, highlighting the collaborative and relational aspect of art and the concept of civic spontaneity. As such, we focus on the “endogenous effect” of art, as mass art-making generated opportunities for self-reflection and collaborative learning about civic life that enhanced participants’ understanding of deliberative citizenship.

The Mirror Image

This chapter sheds light on the perception of Macao’s people regarding the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and its implications for the youth movement in Macao. I argue that Macao society negatively evaluated the occupy movement as counterproductive to economic growth. It believed that the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong would merely harm the central- HKSAR relationship and hurt the development of the region in the long run. To Macao’s young activists, the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement was not necessarily a motivation for their political campaign for reform of the MSAR. The Umbrella Movement demonstrated the enthusiasm of Hong Kong young people for political reform but, at the same time, mirrored and reinforced Macao’s young activists’ political frustration.

From Repression to Attrition

The Umbrella Movement displayed an unprecedented spectacle of resistance and brought Hong Kong under worldwide attention. This chapter demonstrates how the city’s hybrid regime adaptively switched its response to this protest from repression to attrition, after police repression catalyzed heightened mobilization. This strategy of attrition entailed an array of defensive and offensive tactics that extended beyond ignoring protests. By switching to this strategy, the regime actively sought to maintain elite cohesion and block political opportunities while leveraging countermovements and legal interventions to increase the participation cost of the protests and mobilize public discontent. Despite resistance from protesters, the success of attrition suggests its potential use by hybrid regimes as an effective regime response and a flexible holder of tactics.

The Power of Sunflower

This article examines the genesis of Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Movement and how it contributed to the decisive defeat of the Kuomintang (KMT) in the 2016 election. The KMT’s accommodating approach to Beijing since 2008 had deescalated cross-strait military tensions and facilitated closer economic ties. However, the so-called “peace dividend” was not evenly distributed but remained a privilege of the minority who enjoyed political connection. The Sunflower Movement’s support came from believers in democratic values and sovereignty, as well as those who expected future joblessness. The widespread perception of threatened democracy and economic victimization constituted the root causes of the Sunflower Movement, paving the way for the historical victory of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2016.

Rude Awakening

In-depth interviews of the Umbrella Movement’s “committed occupiers” show that many of them were not veteran activists that had prepared for civil disobedience. Many of them were provoked into action by what they perceived to be undue police violence. Their anger allowed them to overcome the threshold of participation. The spontaneous nature of their participation partly explains the amorphous form of the movement, which had little centralized leadership, and some of their ambivalent attitudes concerning the movement’s direction. However, the movement was a major experience of political awakening for many of these participants, which should create a new micro-cohort of participants for future movements.

Creating a Textual Public Space

The Umbrella Movement (Sept-Dec 2014) represented a watershed for Hong Kong’s political culture and self-understanding. Based on over 1000 slogans and other textual and visual material documented during the movement, this study provides an overview of its claims. The slogans mobilize a diversity of cultural and historical repertoires that attest to the hybrid quality of Hong Kong identity and underscore the diversity of sources of political legitimacy. Finally, it is argued that by establishing a system of contending discourses within the occupied public spaces, the movement strived to act out a type of discursive democracy, which represents an unfinished attempt to build a new civic culture among Hong Kong’s younger generation.

Perceived Outcomes and Willingness to Retreat among Umbrella Movement Participants

Conventionally, it is believed that people are more likely to participate in protests if positive outcomes are probable. However, the significance of instrumental rationality seems to be weak in various occupation movements around the world. Against this background, we ask: How did the Umbrella Movement participants perceive the likelihood of various outcomes? How did such perceptions influence their preferred movement strategies? An analysis of onsite protest survey data shows that the majority of participants were not optimistic about the chances of achieving their goals. However, perceived likelihood of getting different types of government concessions indeed affected willingness to retreat, though the influence depended on the configuration of perceived outcome likelihood. The article discusses the place of instrumental rationality in the Umbrella Movement and the conceptualization of perceived outcomes in studies of protests.