State-Mobilized Campaign and the Prodemocracy Movement in Hong Kong, 2013–2015

Abstract

The events surrounding the prodemocracy movement in Hong Kong from 2013 to 2015 represent the latest chapter in a long and torturous struggle for democracy that can be dated back to the early 1980s when Britain and China held their negotiations over the city’s future (So, 1998). The Occupy Central Movement (OCM), initiated by three prodemocracy activists, exhorted supporters to block major roads and exercise civil disobedience in the struggle for full democracy. It soon provoked the Chinese Communist Party-state (“party-state”) to initiate a campaign to counter OCM. Executed mainly through their unofficial agents and sponsored organizations in Hong Kong, its scale of operation was almost unprecedented, at least since the social riot in 1967 (which was largely the spillover of the Cultural Revolution).