Social Movement Studies

Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest

ISSN: 1474-2837 (Print) 1474-2829 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csms20

Explaining spontaneous occupation: antecedents,

contingencies and spaces in the Umbrella
Movement

Edmund W. Cheng & Wai-Yin Chan

To cite this article: Edmund W. Cheng & Wai-Yin Chan (2016): Explaining spontaneous
occupation: antecedents, contingencies and spaces in the Umbrella Movement, Social
Movement Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2016.1252667

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2016.1252667

Published online: 10 Nov 2016.

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Social Movement Studies, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2016.1252667

Explaining spontaneous occupation: antecedents, contingencies

and spaces in the Umbrella Movement
Edmund W. Chenga and Wai-Yin Chanb
a
Department of Government and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong;
b
Department of Government and Public Administration, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper examines the antecedent and contingent causes sparking the Received 13 September 2015
Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Spurred by two contingent events Accepted 5 June 2016
generating pre-emptive and backlash mobilization, the movement is a
KEYWORDS
spontaneous transformation of the staged Occupy Central campaign. Spontaneity; social
Based on an onsite survey (n = 1681) and in-depth interviews (n = 18), this movement; social media;
paper demonstrates how protest experience and social media networked public space; occupy;
and rallied autonomous individuals from diverse backgrounds to occupy Umbrella Movement; Hong
the physical spaces, thereby sustaining a self-mobilized, horizontal and Kong
resilient movement. Spontaneity, however, did not come out of nowhere.
As an integral part of Hong Kong’s bottom-up activism and ecology, this
spontaneous episode encapsulates antecedent events diffusing stalwart
actors, decentralized organization and transgressive repertories. This
paper situates spontaneity in temporal, spatial and emotional contexts to
understand the uncompromising claims and participatory practices of the
spectacular occupation.

The image of demonstrators in a cloud holding up their umbrellas against the pepper spray or teargas moved
many on social media to comment […] [The Umbrella Movement] started off as a student protest last Wednesday
but spiralled over the weekend with protestors using various Twitter hashtags including #OccupyCentral and
#HKDemocracy. (BBC News, 29 September 2014)

The unexpected occurrence of the Umbrella Movement last year enabled students with progressive ideas to
appear on the stage of history, leading the agenda setting in electoral reform and promoting the radicalization
of democracy supporters…when the Occupy Movement recessed, students surely lost the position to set the
political agenda and determine the political outcomes. (Joshua Wong, September 2015)

Introduction
These two quotations recall the spontaneity of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, a stunning
79-day occupation representing the most transgressive episode of contention in the city. The quotation
from BBC reveals how Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP), a pro-democracy civil disobe-
dience campaign lacking a social base, dramatically morphed into the massive occupation amid two
contingent events: the storming of Civic Square adjacent to the Central Government Offices (CGO)
on 26 September and the firing of teargas in the crackdown on protestors on 28 September. Images
of peaceful protestors using umbrellas to shield themselves from the attack of the coercive force soon

CONTACT Edmund W. Cheng ewcheng@hkbu.edu.hk

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2  E. W. CHENG AND W.-Y. CHAN

spread through social media, facilitating rapid, massive self-mobilization and resulting in an occupation
spectacle named the Umbrella Movement. The statement of Joshua Wong, convenor of the student
group Scholarism, connected the movement’s spontaneous outbreak to the rise and fall of student
leadership. While student leaders and OCLP played an indisputable role, they never possessed full
control over the course of the movement. Instead, voluntary actions and horizontal decision-making
processes were consistent elements of a protest structure that was both spontaneous and decentralized.
Spontaneity has been defined as contingent and unplanned events. As Snow and Moss (2014) state,
it is ‘events, happenings, and lines of action, both verbal and nonverbal, which were not planned,
intended, prearranged, or organized in advance of their occurrence’ (p. 1123). Contingent and
unplanned actions are by no means an antithesis of rationality and organization, and they do not
come from out of nowhere (Flesher Fominaya, 2015; Freeman, 1999; Killian, 1984). Human beings
can and often do make conscious and strategic on-the-spot decisions conditioned by their ecological
environment, prior experience and socio-political contexts. The interplay between existing structure
and contingency is analogous to the interactive dynamics in a playing field. Lee and Chan (2011)
contend that ‘[o]ne happening – and sometimes an accidental one such as the scoring of a fluke
goal – can trigger a strategic response, chosen among a number of alternative possibilities (and there
is no guarantee that the best choice is always chosen). The strategic response further influences the
dynamics of the match and may induce further strategic responses on the part of the opponents’
(p. 8). Similarly, Fantasia (1988) argues that collective action is not a simple matter of spontaneous,
irrational and unstructured action versus planned, rational and organized mobilization of resources
(p. 235). Wildcat strikes at Taylor Casting Company in 1975–1976 were unplanned and simultane-
ously structured collective actions with conscious calculation among participants. Worker solidarity
and rudimentary organizational forms emerged in these spontaneous yet orderly collective actions.
Although such solidarity was not a prior fact, it was not without social basis, as daily social interaction
was a foundation of mutuality among workers (pp. 75–120).
Spontaneity is thus pervasive and consequential throughout collective actions. This refutes the con-
ventional thought that spontaneity is more important at the early stage of social movements (Blumer,
1972). Given the inextricable connection between structure and contingency, spontaneity should be
treated as a ‘dynamic element within the collective action process’ rather than as a stage. Spontaneous
actions can occur at various stages of protest movements and shape the course and character of events
(Snow & Moss, 2014, pp. 1125, 1138–1139).
Thus, it would be conceptually and empirically misguided to overemphasize rupture and ignore
continuity when analysing spontaneity. In their seminal work, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001)
regard contentious politics as sustained campaigns of claim-making to power holders involving an
array of contentious performance based on organizations, networks, traditions and solidarity. This
mechanism-process approach seeks to identify the combined effect of a chain of events under which a
movement emerges and transforms in a specific way. Transgressive episode is inextricably connected
to ‘other instances of collective action of a similar kind, and with the actions of different claim-makers
such as authorities and counter-movements’ in specific historical and spatial contexts (Koopmans,
2007, p. 19). As Sewell (2005) argues, ‘most ruptures are neutralized and reabsorbed into the pre-exist-
ing structures in one way or the other’ (p. 270). Social movement is a ‘contingent product’ of bounded
sequences of a series of events (Lee & Chan, 2011, p. 8).
In analysing the structure of contingency in the Orange Revolution, Beissinger (2011) modifies
the mechanism-process approach and contends that causal mechanisms unfolded and accumulated at
structural, conjunctural and endogenous levels. Structural causation refers to the ‘pre-existing condi-
tions that confront individuals and constrain, facilitate, or define their choices’ (p. 27). Conjunctural
causation includes critical events in a given temporal context inciting emotions, uncertainties and
opportunities. Endogenous causation involves interconnections among antecedent, present and sub-
sequent acts of mobilization. No single casual mechanism is adequate to explain the emergence and
transformation of a collective action, as each accounts for some portion of the occurrence, and all are
dependent on one another (pp. 27, 40).
 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES  3

Similarly, the Umbrella Movement unfolded and diffused from structural, conjunctural and endogenous
conditions in Hong Kong’s democratic movement. Recent studies have revealed the structural causes of
the movement (Lui, 2015; Veg, 2015). The precipitous occupation was partly a function of a shift in polit-
ical opportunities structure in the hybrid regime, featuring deepening government-business collusion,
a rise of localism and a nascent movement society (Cheng, 2016; Lee & Chan, 2008; Ma, 2016). It is also
rooted in accumulated grievances against rising social inequality, the authoritarian sovereign’s intensified
intervention and resulting threats to the city’s autonomy and freedoms (Lee & Chan, 2011; Ortmann,
2015; Yep, 2013). Grievances were particularly strong among youth because of the dim prospects for
social mobility and their resentment towards re-colonization (Hui & Lau, 2015; Law, 2014). Street politics
has thus become an acceptable means to express political views, with OCLP serving as ‘the most lethal
weapon’ to reverse the protracted democratization process and preserve the city’s autonomy and identity.
Building upon these structural changes, this article emphasizes the endogenous and conjunctural
causation during the Umbrella Movement, in which staged, temporary civil disobedience action was
substituted by a spontaneous, resilient occupation. This work first illustrates how contingent events
triggered a ‘bandwagon effect’ and citizens’ self-mobilization (Granovetter, 1978). It then examines
the conditions under which social media helped aggregate people from diverse backgrounds into
public spaces through ‘logics of aggregation’ (Juris, 2012) and ‘logic of connective action’ (Bennett &
Segerberg, 2012), which concurrently shaped the horizontal protest structure and facilitated resilient
occupation. By situating the Umbrella Movement in the trajectory of Hong Kong’s bottom-up activism,
this article traces the role of stalwart activists, decentralized organization and creative repertories.
Theoretically, this paper positions social movement as a contextually contingent event spurred by
multiple mechanisms. It emphasizes the causations of spontaneity, arguing for its pervasiveness through
connective action, its embeddedness in spatial-historical contexts and its ability to shape protest claims
and repertoires. By revealing the relationships between spontaneity and horizontal protest structure,
this work explains how temporal and spatial conditions common in Occupy movements are conducive
to participatory democratic practices despite their limitations in achieving immediate concessions.
Snow and Moss’s recent study (2014) provides an invaluable framework to illustrate the activation
and impact of spontaneity. Triggers of spontaneity involve (1) non-hierarchical organization, (2)
uncertain/ambiguous moments, (3) behavioural/emotional priming and (4) specific ecological/spatial
contexts, which have simultaneously occurred in the emergence of the Umbrella Movement. We first
examine how the impaired OCLP created an ambiguous moment leading to the storming of Civic
Square and fragmentation in protest leadership. We then explain why the police chose to fire teargas,
which sparked emotional priming and the protestors’ uncompromising attitudes. We further analyse
the intertwined relations between the ecology of protest sites and spontaneous mobilization, and
between the connectedness of social media and non-hierarchical organizations. At times, antecedents
are discussed to situate contingent adjustments in the face of uncertainties as well as temporal, spatial
and organizational constraints.

Method and data

This paper uses evidence from pertinent data collected from several sources. First, we conducted a
7-day survey with 1681 random and valid samples at the occupied sites at Admiralty, Mongkok and
Causeway Bay between 20 and 26 October 2014 (Sunday through Saturday). We divided these areas
into zones and each day into three timeslots to form a representative sample of respondents. Trained
volunteers were then deployed to randomly pick samples after walking a fixed number of steps in
assigned route. The survey had a response rate of 97%. Second, we conducted 18 semi-structured
interviews with (1) organizers and politicians, (2) volunteers and occupiers and (3) day trippers. This
selection included actors who led, brokered and participated in the movement and whose commit-
ment formed the opposite ends of a spectrum. Third, we conducted participant observations through
daily interactions between different protesters, observing the routines of two spatially peripheral but
4  E. W. CHENG AND W.-Y. CHAN

politically central defence units and assisting two impromptu volunteer groups that provided supplies
and archived arts.

The conjunctural causation of self-mobilization

As a metamorphosis of the scripted yet distorted OCLP, the Umbrella Movement arose from auton-
omous protestors’ self-mobilization and improvisation. While OCLP and student leaders played a
crucial role in setting the agenda and stage for occupation, their mobilization capacity was then lim-
ited. Early in January 2013, law professor Benny Tai (2013) proposed to launch a civil disobedience
campaign – rallying at least 10,000 citizens to participate in a non-violent, illegal sit-in to paralyse
the financial centre Central – if no substantial progress was made on the electoral reform. Regarding
most conventional protest methods as ineffective, Tai believed that OCLP would be the ‘most lethal
weapon’ in negotiation with Beijing on the enactment of genuine universal suffrage. Yet, the idea of
civil disobedience remained controversial and received barely 24% of public support by May 2014
(HKUPOP, 2014). A month later, nearly 800,000 people voted on an OCLP civil referendum on elec-
toral reform proposals. However, this massive turnout was an immediate consequence of the CPG’s
release of the White Paper on the Practice of ‘One Country Two Systems’ Formula, which proclaimed its
‘complete jurisdiction’ over the territory. Despite public outcry, only approximately 3000 people had
signed the ‘Letter of Intent’ to participate in OCLP by mid-September. Two contingent events sparking
emotional and spatial factors, however, transformed these antecedents into the spectacular occupation.

Who were the protesters?

The following tables report the demographic, attitudinal and behavioural data from the onsite survey
and its breakdown with respect to two sets of variables: (1) timing of participation and (2) experience
of protests. ‘Pre-28/9’ and ‘Post-28/9’, respectively, refer to the protestors who arrived before or after
two contingent events, namely, the storming of Civic Square, and who arrived after the firing of teargas.
‘Casual Protesters’ and ‘Stalwart Protesters’, respectively, refer to the protestors whose participation
was restricted to the annual rallies and vigils and extended to other direct actions, as summarized in
Table 4. These breakdowns enable us to examine not only the characteristics of the occupation but
also the effect of antecedents and contingencies in generating participation and shaping protesters’
claims and repertoires.
Table 1 shows that protesters were generally younger and highly educated than the Hong Kong
population. Although the movement was framed as a student movement, students accounted for only
roughly one-fourth of the protesters; the others were mainly workers and professionals. Women and
men played an equally significant role, from supplying umbrellas to shielding from teargas and spilling
bodies to occupy roads, which would soon define the very pulse of the movement.
Tables 2 and 3 show that most protesters were not mobilized by OCLP: only 17.7% of respondents
acknowledged OCLP as a legitimate leader, and fewer than half shared the same idea of civil disobe-
dience. This result coincided with the paradox that fewer than 30% of respondents chose to occupy
major roads, government offices or wildcat occupations as future tactics to fight for democracy despite
their participation in an occupation. By contrast, they preferred extra-institutional yet non-confron-
tational tactics such as a non-cooperation movement (60%) and communal empowerment (50.8%).
Indeed, massive mobilization did not occur until 26 and 28 September. Following the massive OCLP
civil referendum turnout, the CPG’s position toughened. On 31 August, the Standing Committee of
the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) resolved that universal suffrage would be introduced in the
2017 CE election, but a 1200-member nominating committee backed by Beijing would vet candidates.
Student organizations, notably the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) and Scholarism, subse-
quently organized class boycotts and mobilized public sit-ins at Tamar Park outside the CGO beginning
on 22 September. However, only a few thousand protesters showed up. There was no indication that
participation would grow. Table 1 indicates that only 34.7% of the respondents paid their first visit to
 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES  5

Table 1. Demographic backgrounds.

Overall Timing of participation (%) Experience of protest (%)

n % Pre 28/9 Post 28/9 Casual Protestor Stalwart Protestor
Gender Male 862 51.1 52.6 50.4 49.9 53.1
Female 819 48.9 47.4 49.6 50.1 46.9
Age 17 and under 119 7.1 8.4*** 6.4*** 11.8*** 2.6***
18–24 490 29.3 37.9*** 24.6*** 33.8*** 26.2***
25–29 404 24.2 21.0*** 25.8*** 20.2*** 27.9***
30–39 401 24.0 16.9*** 27.9*** 20.9*** 26.1***
40–49 117 7.0 6.7*** 7.1*** 5.6*** 8.3***
50–64 114 6.8 7.4*** 6.5*** 6.4*** 7.3***
65 and over 27 1.6 1.6*** 1.6*** 1.3*** 1.7***
Occupation Student 427 25.6 34.5*** 20.9*** 33.3*** 19.1***
Non-student 1240 74.4 65.5*** 79.1*** 66.7*** 80.9***
Education Primary 24 1.5 1.4** 1.6** 2.4*** 0.9***
Secondary 367 23.7 22.8** 24.3** 27.7*** 18.7***
Diploma 320 20.7 17.8** 22.2** 20.4*** 20.5***
Degree 745 46.0 47.1** 45.4** 44.8*** 49.6***
Graduate 128 8.1 11.0** 6.5** 4.7*** 10.4***
Class Upper 7 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.2** 0.5**
Upper-middle 91 5.5 5.2 5.6 5.3** 4.8**
Middle 363 21.7 21.1 22.1 19.1** 22.5**
Lower middle 647 38.8 37.7 39.4 37.1** 41.2**
Grassroots 489 29.3 30.4 28.7 31.6** 28.3**
Don’t know 72 4.3 5.0 3.9 6.7** 2.7**
n= 1681 582 1096 451 1017
34.7% 65.2% 26.8% 60.5%
**p < 0.01.
***p < 0.001.

Table 2. Views on leadership and tactics.

n %
Legitimate Leader HKFS 947 56.5
Leaderless 584 34.7
Scholarism 486 29.0
OCLP 296 17.7
Future Tactics Non-cooperation movement 1002 60.0
Communal empowerment 837 50.8
Protest through legislature 621 37.2
Conventional protests 612 36.7
Occupation of major roads 460 27.6
Occupation of government office 401 24.0
Wildcat occupation 293 17.5
Ideal Leadership Political parties 103 7.6
Civic groups 272 20.1
Student organizations 549 40.5
Self-organized 430 31.8

the protest site during the week of the class boycotts. Table 2 shows that identification with the HKFS
(56.5%) and Scholarism (29%) as movement leaders was fragmented. Fewer than half of respondents
(40.5%) regarded student organizations as the ideal protest leadership. Instead, one-third considered
the movement leaderless (34.7%) and stated that future actions should be self-organized by protesters
(31.8%). This weak consensus regarding leadership indicated that organizational links played only a
minor role in the massive turnout.
Instead, two interrelated contingencies, the storming of Civic Square and the firing of teargas,
combined with what Snow and Moss (2014, pp. 1130 and 1136) call ‘ambiguous moments’ and ‘spatial
contexts’, leading to the public staging of contentious action and hence rapid and massive mobilization.
On the one hand, the pre-emptive strikes by students on 26 September were on-the-spot adjustments
6  E. W. CHENG AND W.-Y. CHAN

in light of the uncertainties induced by strong police deployment in the CGO and the inability of
OCLP to proceed as scripted. Furthermore, a long weekend immediately before the National Day
holidays, high accessibility of the protest sites and narrow pavement adjacent to the highway enabled
people to infiltrate occupied zones as a spontaneous response to the police’s repressive measures to
curb mobilization. In other words, while temporal factors conditioned mass mobilization, the spatial
characteristics of Hong Kong determined the pattern of resilient participation.

Storming of Civic Square and ambiguous moment

Students’ storming of Civic Square, the courtyard of the CGO, on 26 September was not a conscious
plan but an improvised strategy. The HKSF and Scholarism initially planned a one-week sit-in pro-
test at Tamar Park between 22 and 27 September. As a counter-movement to drive away students,
the pro-regime Federation of Guangxi Community Organizations hastily filed an application on 19
September to use Tamar Park from 26 to 28 September to celebrate National Day. This intervention
forced students to leave Tamar Park but failed to disperse them.
On 26 September, Joshua Wong took the stage at midnight and asked students to launch a
‘non-scripted square-off ’ to occupy Civic Square. He explained the causes of this seemingly
impulsive action:
Occupying Tamar Park was no longer possible; the memory of the anti-national education campaign [when
Scholarism forced the government to concede] remained fresh; the grille recently cordoned by the authorities also
created a visual target. But, after all, we were thinking of how to sustain protest momentum. So, when this idea
came to our mind, we took action to reclaim what belongs to the people. (Interview, Hong Kong, 20 July 2015)
The secretary of HKFS, Alex Chow, concurred with the above observation and stressed the instant
decision-making process in the disruption of the original plan:
It happened fast. We briefly discussed among ourselves, and then we asked OCLP to join. They replied with
reservations. We know this could weaken our strength or show disunity. But the purity of protest causes carried
more weight at that time. So, we struck. The entire process lasted less than an hour. (Interview, Hong Kong, 2
September 2015)
The storming was an unplanned act initiated and executed by students, leading to the early emer-
gence of OCLP in a different location. Approximately 100 people managed to scale the barricades
and occupy the area, but were quickly surrounded by police. Local and international media rushed
to report: their supplies were depleted, their access to food or lavatory was denied and their
homes were searched. That night, 13 protesters aged 16 to 35 were arrested. The police’s reactions
immediately caused public outcry. Taking advantage of the weekend and high accessibility of the
protest site through the public transport system, thousands of citizens arrived and stood guard
outside Civic Square to ‘engulf police’ and ‘protect students’. Failing to disperse protesters with
pepper spray, the police retreated from Tim Mei Ave. By midnight, 27 September, approximately
50,000 people had congregated. Surprised by this turnout, Benny Tai announced the launch of
OCLP at dawn.
By midday 28 September, the police had not advanced; instead, they sealed off the CGO with road-
blocks, trapping early protestors and suppressing mass assembly. The police hastily arrested several
pan-democratic legislators who attempted negotiations. Despite police efforts, waves of protesters
arrived; unable to join the protest, they gradually swamped nearby streets and pedestrian lanes. At
approximately 4 pm, the swelling crowd dispersed at Admiralty’s mass transit station and spilled onto
Harcourt Road and Connaught Road, stopping traffic and flooding an eight-lane highway. Precisely
because of the absence of a conscious plan and central leadership, the spectacular occupation then
reached its midpoint (Map 1).
 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES  7

Map 1. The ecology of the protest site in Admiralty, Hong Kong.

Firing of teargas and emotional primary

The police firing of teargas at nightfall, 28 September, was another contingent event. To disperse the
crowd, riot police were quickly deployed, using pepper spray and batons and firing a total of 87 canisters
of teargas. Peaceful and unarmed protesters protected themselves with plastic goggles, facemasks and
umbrellas; they dispersed but quickly regrouped. Images of police brutality spread through television
and social media. Apparently, the police’s repressive effort backfired and fuelled participation, after
which thousands of protesters spontaneously marched along Connaught Road from Admiralty to
the Central. Two other protest sites – the shopping district of Causeway Bay and the working-class
neighbourhood of Mongkok – also emerged. Under the threat that the police would use plastic bullets,
the HKFS, echoed by OCLP, Cardinal Joseph Zen and media mogul Jimmy Lai, proposed to retreat
on 29 September. Instead of listening to protest and community leaders’ advice and going home,
hundreds of thousands of citizens became occupiers. As Benny Tai concluded, ‘[n]body can stop the
protest now’ (Teargas fired, 2014).
The protesters’ series of improvised tactics responding to police repression was critical in realizing
the unintended yet spectacular occupation. Images of protesters suffering from police violence swiftly
circulated through television and social media, producing public outrage. Our survey finds that 65%
of respondents (n = 1096) visited the protest site on or after 28 September, including 52% who were
motivated by dissatisfaction with the police violence (Table 3). As Hess and Martin (2006) argue,
perceptions of unjust repression can lead to stronger movement mobilization. Rapid and widespread
mobilization amid police repression can be further understood through Jasper’s (1997) concept of
‘moral shocks’: ‘an unexpected event or piece of information raises such a sense of outrage in a person
who she becomes inclined towards political action, with or without the network of personal contacts
emphasized in mobilization and process theories’ (p. 106). The shocking, publicly staged police brutality
against unarmed protesters provoked a sense of visceral unease and outrage among individuals and
triggered a turnout of critical mass, including ‘strangers’ and ‘beholders’ previously unconnected with
8  E. W. CHENG AND W.-Y. CHAN

Table 3. Motivations for occupation.a

Indicators Degree of importance (%)

Support genuine universal suffrage Civic-political 86.4
Against current administration Civic-political 68.8
Oppose police violence Event-specific 52.2
Support civil disobedience Event-specific 46.1
Preserve Hong Kong's identity Ethno-cultural 33.3
Resist Beijing's interventions Civic-cultural 22.7
Champion better livelihood Socioeconomic 4.6
a
Respondents were asked to rank on a Likert scale.

OCLP (Jasper & Poulsen, 1995). Although event-specific indicators are crucial, civic-political claims
are amongst the most important protest motivations. Support genuine universal suffrage (86.4%) was
ranked slightly higher than against current administration (68.8%), which indicates that protestors
consider a systemic political reform a necessary means to preserve freedoms and redress policies.

Antecedents, opportunities and movement continuity

The outcome and framing of the above contingencies are better articulated through the antecedents
in post-colonial Hong Kong. Table 4 documents a positive relationship between participation in prior
protests and participation in the Umbrella Movement. Although as many as 85% of protesters had
participated in previous sit-ins, rallies or occupations – especially the annual July 1 rally (84.7%) and the
June 4 vigil (73.7%) – 15% were newcomers who had no protest experience, representing a considerable
increase in the city’s contentious population. Compared with the vigils and rallies lasting decades and
attracting a popular base, this participation in a one-time anti-national education campaign (63.6%),
including 72% who visited the protest sites before teargas was fired, clearly served as a rehearsal for
the Umbrella Movement. In contrast, while participation in OCLP civil referendum (65.4%) was a
less demanding form of voting exercise, one should not underestimate its civil education effect on the
readiness of participants to join an occupation when other contingencies arise (Lee, 2015). As many
occupiers concurred, while they might not have fully prepared to pay dues for civil disobedience,
they frequently imagined the scene of occupying roads after almost two years of public deliberation.
Table 4 also indicates that later mobilizers had less experience in both organized rallies and direct
actions. Police violence thus attracted a significant number of newcomers who were not necessarily
motivated by pre-protest factors; these late mobilizers might not have shared or approved the protest
repertoires but were nonetheless attracted to the occupation zones due to a sense of injustice, anger or
efficacy (Chan, 2015). As will soon be revealed, early mobilizers were largely motivated by the demand

Table 4. History of protest.

Overall Timing of participation (%) Experience of protest (%)

n % Pre 28/9 Post 28/9 Casual Protestor Stalwart Protestor
June 4 vigil 1054 73.7 77.3*** 54.8*** 29.9*** 90.2***
July 1 rally 1211 84.7 85.1*** 65.1*** 50.1*** 96.8***
Pro-heritage move- 105 7.4 9.5*** 4.6*** 0.2*** 10.2***
ments
Anti-integration move- 337 23.6 34.1*** 12.7*** 1.1*** 32.7***
ments
Five constituency 413 24.7 34.7*** 19.4*** 2.2*** 39.8***
referendum
Anti-national education 908 63.6 72.3*** 44.3*** 24.6*** 78.4***
movement
OCLP civil referendum 1080 65.4 77.5*** 58.9*** 48.2*** 86.5***
***p < 0.001.
 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES  9

Table 5. Level of commitment.a

Timing of participation (%) Experience of protest (%)

Overall Pre 28/9 Post 28/9 Casual Protestor Stalwart Protestor
Days of staya 13.3 17.1 11.4 10.6 15.2
Hours of stay 4.9 5.6 4.5 4.6 5.1
Percentage of overnight 54.1 68.3 45.9 43.2 60.5
stays
Days of overnight stays 5.0 5.8 4.3 4.5 5.1
n= 1681 582 1096 451 1017
a
The survey was conducted between the 24th and 30th days of occupation.

for universal suffrage or the cause of civil disobedience, whereas later mobilizers were likely triggered
by dissatisfaction with the use of teargas or livelihood issues. Moreover, early mobilizers were more
committed in terms of duration and form of participation (Table 5). However, the coming of later
mobilizers served as a mobilizing force that lowered the perceived cost of participation, despite the
understanding that the occupation was illegal and unauthorized. It generated not only a bandwagon
effect that led to surging participation for newcomers but also a vast spatial frame from which the
protest core could amplify their claims and perform creative repertoires to include ordinary citizens.
The sheer presence of later mobilizers did not necessarily make contention resilient or transgressive;
rather, their very participation pushed protest boundaries and created opportunities for core actors.
As Table 6 indicates, despite the impressive turnout, the movement was unable to attract pro-estab-
lishment supporters, as measured by the protestors’ existing voting preference. Hence, the contingen-
cies had not overcome the overarching political cleavages in society. Notably, many protestors would
shift their support from moderate political parties to radical political parties in the next election, reflect-
ing the transforming effects of the occupation along with scepticism of the pan-democrat leadership.
In short, participation in these events constitutes what Snow and Moss (2014) call ‘behavioural
or emotional priming’ resulting from antecedent experience (pp. 1133–4). It also echoes Flesher
Fominaya’s notion of movement continuity. As early as 2006 and 2007, dozens of progressive youth
spontaneously occupied the Star Ferry and Queen’s Ferry Piers – monuments of both grassroots mobi-
lizations dating to the 1960s and landing sites for colonial governors – which were soon demolished. In
the subsequent protest against Guangzhou-Hong Kong Express Railway Link in 2009–2010, the city’s
first contemporary occupation diffused into sieges of the Legislative Council (Legco) building, the CE’s
residence and the CGO (Cheung, 2014, pp. 435–445; Ku, 2012, pp. 10–14). Although participation in
these pro-heritage and anti-integration events was relatively minor, the spread of stalwart protestors,
direct actions and decentralized organization were evident in these early initiatives.
First, leaders of Scholarism admitted that they recognized the threat of the loss of local auton-
omy and freedoms and were attracted by the promises of street politics through anti-integration
events. Scolarism’s 300-plus founding members were actually strangers rallied through Facebook and

Table 6. Political affiliation.a

n %
Voting record in previous Lecgo election
Pan-democrat supporters 648 98.5
Moderate parties 433 65.9
Radical parties 215 32.6
Pro-establishment supporters 10 1.5
Voting preference in the next Legco election
Pan-democrat supporters 929 99.4
Moderate parties 485 51.8
Radical parties 444 47.5
Pro-establishment supporters 6 0.6
a
Many young protestors did not register or vote beforehand.
10  E. W. CHENG AND W.-Y. CHAN

WhatsApp (Interview, Joshua Wong and Oscar Lai, Hong Kong, 17 and 23 July 2015). However, by
the time the government proposed to strengthen patriotic education in primary and secondary school
curricula, these members were ready to take action. This highly spontaneous campaign, despite being
initiated by decentralized protest groups and lacking resources, effectively mobilized 90,000 people to
occupy Civic Square on 31 July 2012. Subsequently, two members of another new protest groups called
Left 21 created a Facebook page on 15 October 2013 to contest the government’s decision to reject
a highly competitive and relatively critical television operator’s application for free-to-air television
licenses. In less than 24 hours, the page received more than 440,000 Likes, ranking in the top five
Facebook pages in Hong Kong (Socialbakers, 2014). Online anger was quickly converted into street
politics, mobilizing 120,000 people to occupy Civic Square three days later. The storming of Civic
Square (which was cordoned by the authorities after these events) on September 26 was therefore a
highly symbolic action in reclaiming a sacred public space by and for the people.
Second, the appeal to direct actions increased both resistance and cost. Although the excessive use
of teargas against unarmed protestors was probably a tactical error, the regime had been determined to
suppress OCLP from the outset. Under the code name ‘Operation Solarpeak’, hundreds of new equip-
ment purchases were made, and 7000 police officers (one-fourth of the police force) were deployed.
The police staged several exercises and declared that they were fully prepared to handle mass protests,
adding that ample prison space was reserved to detain protesters (Hong Kong Police, 2014). Before
the contingencies, few expected that the occupation would last more than a few days. To demonstrate
their resolve to quell the protests, the police arrested more than 500 stalwart protesters who joined
an overnight sit-in rehearsal for OCLP on 1 July 2014. The authorities’ message was unequivocal:
repressive actions would be applied to end street occupation. Thus, OCLP leaders regarded the civil
disobedience campaign as merely a symbol of self-sacrifice and a long-term legal battle (Interview,
Benny Tai, Hong Kong, 18 March 2016). Contingencies are situated in the regime’s learning curve:
the firing of teargas corresponded to the interpretation that the traditional wait-it-out strategy was
obsolete in contending with direct actions.

Conditions for self-mobilization and horizontal engagement

Rapid, massive responses to these triggering events were amplified by extensive social media use,
which effectively coordinated self-mobilized protesters and diffused their participatory practices. A
polycentric yet networked protest structure soon emerged, urging horizontal engagement but also
relying on spontaneous actions to sustain the occupation.

Non-hierarchal but networked structure

Previous studies (Lee & Chan, 2011; Lynch, 2011; Onuch, 2015; Tremayne, 2014; Theocharis, Lowe,
van Deth, & García-Albacete, 2015) concur that social media offer an interactive, low-cost platform
for instant exchanges of information and opinions with other people within and between existing
or newly established online networks. Individual decisions are made based on shared information
and modelling others’ personal experiences (Shirky, 2011; Enjolras, Steen-Johnsen, & Wollebaek,
2013). Social media thus serve as an essential ‘public screen’ enabling the immediate and emotional
mediation of public events, large-scale discussion and collective responses to these events (DeLuca
& Peeples, 2002).
Social media further influence how contentious politics are organized in physical spaces. As Juris
(2012) argues, social media in concrete public areas facilitate the ‘logics of aggregation’ that gather
people from diverse backgrounds through horizontal engagement. Social media are embedded in
ongoing practices of activism, generating mass assembly in public spaces. Dense information, instant
communication and decentralized coordination of voluntary actions arise through horizontal organi-
zation. Individuals and loosely connected groups can thus spontaneously react to public events, facil-
itating diverse and autonomous actors to gather at concrete physical locales. The Umbrella Movement
 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES  11

demonstrates the logics of aggregation less in the form of ‘crowds of individuals’ (Castells, 2015) than
in ‘networks of networks’, aggregating the collective recognition of diverse grievances or interests
(Juris, 2012, p. 272). Nevertheless, both researchers concur that social media ultimately facilitates
‘leaderless’ movements emphasizing individual autonomy and deliberative practices. The non-hier-
archical structure arises not because of the absence of leaders but because of ‘the deep, spontaneous
distrust of most participants in the movement towards any form of power delegation’ (Castells, 2015,
p. 252). Horizontal networked movements are organized through a participatory model based on
direct democracy, non-vertical structure and inclusive decision-making processes in the form of open
forums. They represent a rejection of vertical representative models and closed-door negotiations
(Flesher Fominaya, 2015; Maeckelbergh, 2012; Razsa & Kurnik, 2012).
After students’ storming of Civic Square and the police’s firing of teargas, collective action was
quickly mediated by social media. More than 1.3 million protest-related tweets appeared from 26 to
30 September (Dastagir & Hampson, 2014). Likewise, the Facebook pages of either pro-regime or
pro-democracy supporters were flooded with news of this spectacular event. As Table 7 shows, many
protesters received and transmitted information concurrently through mobile and online platforms.
Many individuals networked with their own acquaintances and assembled in public spaces. Table 8
shows that 20% of protesters participated alone, whereas 73% went to protest sites with friends, 35%
with schoolmates, 31% with family members and 29% and notably nearly one-third of them made new
friends at the protest sites. Through repeated sharing among netizens, the image of a protester using
an umbrella to shield himself from teargas flooded people’s Facebook pages, making the umbrella
a symbol of resistance. Networked through personalized content sharing across a digital platform,
this ‘logic of connective action’ substitutes for the traditional logic of collective action in defining the
dynamics of contentious politics in our age (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012).
Online mobilization of autonomous individuals resulted in a decentralized, non-hierarchical struc-
ture. Numerous protesters credited the ensuing street occupation to the spontaneous, self-organized
actions of ordinary protesters. These protesters emphasized ‘leaderless’ horizontalism and viewed
themselves as autonomous agents without group affiliation. Legislator Alan Leong told The Guardian
that ‘[w]hat we have seen is spontaneous – without leadership, without prior organization, of its own
volition … a people’s movement’ (Branigan, 2014). The slogan ‘No leaders, only the mass’ indeed
became a modus operando tacitly endorsed by student leaders. Political parties and SMOs were margin-
alized and criticized for capitalizing on the movement for political gain. As a pan-democrat politician
complained, ‘our party contributed many resources into the movement, like keeping the occupied sites
safe and clean. However, no one cared’ (Interview, Hong Kong, 26 October 2014).

Table 7. Major source of information.a

Degree of importance (%)

Social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) 82.5
Online new media 72.2
Mobile communication (e.g., WhatsApp, Firechat, Telegram) 41.8
Newspaper (including online versions) 41.4
Television -16.0
a
Respondents were asked to rank on a Likert scale.

Table 8. Protest companions.

n %
Friends 1229 73.3
Schoolmates 590 35.2
Family members 512 30.5
New friends made at protest sites 490 29.2
Colleagues 478 28.5
Alone 334 19.9
12  E. W. CHENG AND W.-Y. CHAN

Despite the absence of central leadership, the Umbrella Movement was not unorganized. A plural-
ity of self-organized groups served as temporary centres of influence through flexible networks and
overlapping membership. Informal leaders and protestors exchanged ideas and coordinated partici-
pation in joint actions (Castells, 2015). Networked protest forms were common in the global justice
movements of the 2000s and in the recent Occupy movement, sharing a ‘cultural logic of networking’
(Juris, 2008). Although not directly imitating those movements, this logic was organically present when
the occupation began. While the notion of anarchy was not widely acknowledged, anti-establishment
sentiments and self-government initiatives were strong and evolved gradually throughout the occupa-
tion. Some protesters preferred to see themselves as self-organized, committing to building trust and
solidarity within and across different collective communities (Interview, defence group leader, Hong
Kong, 12 October 2014). Others insisted that they were acting of their own will, emphasizing their
lack of organizational affiliation. One protester staffing a recycling booth rejected the term ‘volunteer’,
arguing that the Chinese term for volunteers (yigong) implied links to hierarchy (Interview, recycling
station volunteer, Hong Kong, 23 October 2014).
Whereas student groups and OCLP played crucial roles in framing the protest and negotiating
with authorities, self-organized and networked practices among autonomous individuals essentially
maintained the daily operations of protracted occupation. The protest sites did not descend into
chaos even when the state suspended public services, including policing and garbage removal, in the
occupied areas. The horizontal-networked structure and decentralized protests groups are carriers
of spontaneous mobilization and online activism. Taking advantage of Hong Kong’s high Internet
and smartphone penetration, citizens have widely used such online platforms as Facebook, YouTube,
WhatsApp, discussion forums and citizen-based media to obtain information and express political
views (Garrett & Ho, 2014, pp. 369–372; Lau, 2014, pp. 395–396). Coordinated through self-initiators
and informal leaders, protesters managed to resolve many logistic issues to sustain the occupation,
such as soliciting donations and distributing supplies.

Decentralized but resilient engagement

Horizontal and voluntary engagement fostered spontaneous actions that induced a resilient occupation.
As Snow and Moss (2014) argues, ‘non-hierarchical movements are more likely to produce spontaneous
collective actions, because their cultures valorize openness, innovation, and experimental forms of
collective action … because non-hierarchical movements value and often rely on impromptu contri-
butions by participants’ (p. 1128). Table 9 reveals the diversity and resilience of Umbrella Movement
participation. More than half of the protesters donated supplies, and half participated in reading,
singing, public discussions or teach-ins. More than one-third participated in arts activities. As many
as 34% and 19% contributed to more demanding tasks, such as volunteering and frontline defence,

Table 9. Form of participation.

Overall Timing of participation (%) Experience of protest (%)

n % Pre 28/9 Post 28/9 Casual Protestor Stalwart Protestor
Wandering 110 6.6 4.3*** 7.8*** 9.1*** 4.5***
Reading, discussion, 968 57.7 59.6*** 56.7*** 55.7 59.1
singing, etc.
Donation 843 50.3 61.2*** 44.6*** 42.4*** 56.5***
Persuading relatives 757 45.1 52.9*** 41.0*** 39.2*** 49.4***
and friends
Artistic and cultural 583 34.8 37.5*** 33.3*** 27.3*** 39.2***
work
Volunteering work 576 34.3 46.2*** 28.1*** 29.7** 37.8**
Defence and direct 319 19.0 27.0*** 14.8*** 11.5*** 24.1***
attack
**p < 0.01.
***p < 0.001.
 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES  13

respectively. This time-intensive, eclectic protest participation was unprecedented in Hong Kong.
Contrary to conventional protests that adhere to a predetermined set of repertoires and last several
hours, the Umbrella Movement created both temporal and spatial fabrics enabling protesters to artic-
ulate demands through individual initiatives, independent of hierarchical organization. Despite low
expectations of the likelihood of achieving the protest goals, protesters remained committed and con-
tinued to express their utopian aspirations because they saw participation as a means of empowerment:
I enjoy being here even though we are just living on the street like the homeless. I couldn’t figure out why, but
slowly I realized that the public space was what we have been struggling for. You can sing, study, share food,
create art, make new friends and work on a common cause. You can imagine the future of our city, discuss an
ideal political system and you are being listened to. This is a utopia. (Interview, Hong Kong, 29 October 2014)
Individuals’ improvised actions prompted the formation of various self-organized circles and infor-
mal leadership facilitating the movement’s daily operations and interactions (Map 1). For example,
scattered across the occupied sites, supply stations typically designated one or two protesters as group
leaders. Leaders coordinated with one another on matters including supply reallocation, patrolling for
suspicious persons and frontline defence through network infrastructures (online collaboration tools
and peer-to-peer messaging). However, these tasks were not limited to internal matters. Supply station
leaders, for example, were invited by the Tramways Company to discuss the possibility of reopening
blocked tramlines at the protest sites. Meanwhile, protesters’ work involved extensive voluntarism.
One impressive example was a 24-h battery recharging station at Admiralty that was initiated by a
student and his friends to recharge smartphones for free. At least 800 smartphones passed through
the station each day, and remarkably, people confidently entrusted valuable property to strangers.
Another example involves a group formed by artists and academics to archive art at the protest sites.
Within days, more than 200 volunteers were recruited to the preservation project in a race against
time to record their creative output before police clearance. Hence, the Umbrella Movement was not
‘leaderless’ as the rhetoric claimed. Instead, countless informal leaders who collaborated with one
another through both online and face-to-face interactions brokered its decentralized, polycentric
and networked structure.
This horizontal-networked participation produced a sense of collective community that sustained
the occupation. The protest site at Harcourt Road was called ‘Harcourt Village’, and occupiers there were
‘villagers’. The renowned ‘Lennon Wall’, a lived space for people to post their wishes, was an improvised
action of six youths whose participation was triggered by teargas. On 1 October, they asked protesters
to express their views on sticky notes and posted 20 notes on a CGO wall. The next day, the wall was
covered by pro-democracy messages. Since then, they assumed responsibility for maintenance work
on the wall (Liang, 2015). ‘Lennon Wall’ soon became a tangible locale of the protest site at Admiralty
and a symbolic icon of the Umbrella Movement.
Spontaneous actions of individuals and informal leaders sometimes appeared to challenge the
visible leadership, reflecting the polycentric structure of the protest. On 19 November, for example,
numerous protesters stormed the Legco building; this action was instigated online and condemned
by campaign leaders. Three days later, dozens of protesters answered an internet appeal to confront
the leadership. They marched to the ‘main stage’ at the Admiralty protest site and carried placards
reading ‘you do not represent us’. They demanded dismissal of the marshal system established by
protest leaders aiming to maintain order at the protests, which nonetheless restricted their storming
of the Legco building and other autonomous actions.
The distrust of centralized protest leadership reflects cynical views of organizational affiliation
by protest participants in Hong Kong. As scholars have shown, large-scale mobilizations such as the
1 July rallies were regarded as primarily resulting from citizen self-mobilization, although protest
organizations played a significant role in coordinating and mobilizing resources. Part of this distrust
could be attributed to the fact that grass-roots mobilization and party politics have been relatively
detached since the late colonial era (Lui & Chiu, 1997, p. 105). Such distrust was deepened by the per-
ceived incompetence of veteran pro-democracy groups and their leadership. Troubled by democratic
14  E. W. CHENG AND W.-Y. CHAN

stagnation, ageing leadership and standardized repertoires, youth activists who organized the 1 July
rally sought alternative paths:
The 1 July rally has become routinized. Constrained by precedent, we felt compelled to brief the authority on
detailed actions and even help the police to disperse the crowd at the end-point. These expectations are absurd.
How can we denounce the regime and then work with it with ease? Isn’t protest supposed to be radical, or at
least unpredictable? (Interviews, Hong Kong, 13 and 14 December 2013)
Organized protest was reappraised as ritualistic and unable to empower participants, reflecting both
pragmatic criticism and an ideological challenge to hierarchical structures. Beginning around 2010,
participants began to criticize traditional SMOs, which have close links to the pan-democrats. The
perception was that their long-standing protest practices were too moderate and predictable, render-
ing them toothless challenges to the authorities. Indeed, a categorical distrust of protest leaders was
notable at the onset of the Umbrella Movement. As OCLP leaders launched the civil disobedience
movement after students were arrested, many protesters criticized the organizers as ‘hijacking’ the
student-led class boycott, and some left immediately (Interviews, Hong Kong, 4 and 5 October 2014).
When teargas was fired at nightfall, protesters ignored repeated calls by organizers to retreat from the
streets. The ensuing street occupation was credited to the spontaneous actions of ordinary protesters,
not the protest leadership, hence weakening the legitimacy of both student and OCLP leaders.

The ecology of uncompromising attitudes

As contingent and spontaneous events occurred throughout the protest, social media played a vital
role in providing on-site protesters and online users with information to make decisions about further
actions. For example, on the evening of 15 October, many protestors rushed and ‘reclaimed’ Lung
Wo Road after the police unexpectedly cleared barricades to allow traffic to resume in the morn-
ing (Map 1). This spontaneous action of protestors caused confrontations. A graphic video showing
a handcuffed protestor taken to a dark corner and being beaten by seven officers was soon televised
and spread across social media locally and globally. This video caused public outcry and refuelled the
protracted occupation.
More importantly, online opinions limited the choices of protest leaders in the field. Given the spon-
taneous nature of the movement, the leaders soon decided that only those supporting the movement
and staying in the field were considered stakeholders in the decision-making process. After failing to
mobilize school boycotts and strikes for workers and merchants following the firing of teargas, the
OCLP and SMO leaders had already realized that time was not on their side and that public opinion
might soon turn against the occupation. Leaders thus considered negotiating with local government
and finding ways to retreat, but they lacked the legitimacy and capacity to call protestors off the streets
(Interviews, Hong Kong, 12, 13 and 17 October 2014). As an OCLP leader admitted, middlemen con-
nected to Beijing relayed a message to him that the central authority had formulated a ‘no concession,
no bloodshed’ policy, before it was reported in the New York Times (Interview, Kin-man Chan, Hong
Kong, 16 March 2016). While this policy halted the regime’s hardliners from continuing their violent
repression, it restricted softliners from giving any meaningful concessions apart from the open dialogue
on 21 October, which had barely satisfied the occupiers and their supporters.
As such, several onsite survey teams, including ours, were approached by OCLP and student lead-
ers to solicit the attitudes of volunteers, occupiers and day trippers, especially towards the question
‘what’s next?’.
In this context, the protestors were interacting and influenced by online opinions and onsite ecology.
Such opinions were often dominated by radicals who might not appreciate the threats in the field and
the difficulties in negotiating with the local government backed by Beijing while insisting on original
claims such as ‘inclusion for civic nomination’ and ‘the withdrawal of the NPCSC decision’. As noted
by protest leaders and politicians, these uncompromising attitudes often surfaced in coordination
meetings between protest groups and with volunteers and occupiers, most of whom were located at the
outskirts of the protest zones and hence suffered from constant police surveillance and intimidation
 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES  15

Table 10. Protest goal.a

Degree of likelihood (%)

Inclusion of civil nomination in the CE election -25.1
Amendment of the 831 NPCSC decision -29.1
Resignation of HKSAR officials 17.5
Increased representation of the Nomination Committee 42.6
Reduced proportion of functional constituencies in the Legco 22.6
a
Respondents were asked to rank on a Likert scale.

(Interviews, Hong Kong, 30 October 2014 and 26 July 2015). Anyone attempting to deviate from these
goals was attacked and considered a traitor. Although these online opinion leaders and their onsite
supporters might have lacked decision-making authority, they possessed veto power. The most salient
example was the last-minute withdrawal of the ‘onsite referendum’ as a path forward for the protracted
occupation scheduled on 27 and 28 October. Although the referendum was widely considered a retreat
mechanism, it was also the last proactive strategy initiated by protest leaders. Radicals, mostly from
the soon-to-be-demolished Mongkok site, then assumed the lead in breaking into the Legco building
on 21 November and blockading the CGO on 30 November. The activists have since diffused into
the civic faction insisting on non-violent tactics and the localist faction favouring militant actions.
Contrary to popular belief, the protestor’s uncompromising attitudes do not mean that they are irra-
tional. Table 10 shows that they generally realized that their two major demands, namely, the inclusion
of civil nomination (25.1%) and the amendment of the NPCSC decision (-29.1%), were unlikely to be
achieved. Why did they voluntarily and persistently engage in an event whose goals are unattainable?
While the protestors were motivated by righteous indignation after the contingent events, they were
also trapped in the structural constraints in which the ultimate and distant decision-makers would
never be effectively challenged by the protests in the city. Under this dilemma, a stalwart yet rational
protestor tends to favour expressive repertoires, aiming to raise and widen public consciousness rather
than to win immediate political concession.

Conclusion
This paper examines the contingent and endogenous causes of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong.
It proposes that both antecedents and contingencies are essential to understand spontaneity in par-
ticular and movement dynamics in general. A chain of temporal, spatial and organizational contexts
has caused and shaped the spontaneous occupation, with protestors’ prior experiences shaping their
values and informing their decisions. In fact, the movement trajectory shows that contingencies are
often conditioned by the antecedent events, along with their message of accumulated grievances and
their practice of direct actions. Having emerged from critical conjunctures and diffused through social
media, spontaneity thus favours a horizontal protest structure. Additionally, the presence of favourable
spatial factors fostered massive mobilization and voluntary, participatory and networked practices.
All these factors intertwined to constitute a spontaneous and resilient occupation.
Although the protest did not accomplish its political goal of universal suffrage, it gave birth to an
‘Umbrella Generation’ whose participatory practices led to fresh political imaginations and attracted
new actors. In November 2015, eight occupy protestors commonly known as ‘Umbrella soldiers’ won
seats in the District Council elections. Despite resource discrepancy, two of them surprisingly defeated
veteran pro-regime politicians, revealing the potential strength of the political forces emerging from
the movement. In March 2016, Scholarism was disbanded to form a new political party composed of
members from HKFS and Scholarism. Eventually, these new political parties and SMOs managed to
send eight broadly defined activists into the 70-member Legco in the elections in September 2016.
Certainly, their localist claims and transgressive repertoires generated greater uncertainties regarding
Hong Kong’s civic activism and its central–local relations. However, by exposing and nurturing the
irreconcilable differences between state and civil society and between different ends and means of
16  E. W. CHENG AND W.-Y. CHAN

resistance, the Umbrella Movement has contingently reconciled the tension between street politics
and electoral politics. Hong Kong's noteworthy post-Occupy trajectory also provided clues to address
whether the post-2011 global activism is a spectacular moment or a systematic movement.

Timeline

16 January Benny Tai proposes OCPL

2013
10 June 2014 CPG issues a white paper to reconfigure ‘One Country, Two Systems’
22 June OCLP organizes a civil referendum on electoral reform proposals
31 August NPCSC announces its resolution on the 2017 Chief Executive election
22 September HKFS and Scholarism launch a week of class boycotts and organize sit-in protests at Tamar Park
26 September A pro-regime organization celebrates National Day at Tamar Park, forcing sit-in protests to move to Tim Mei
Ave; that night, students storm Civic Square
27 September The police arrest and detain 74 people overnight. Approximately, 50,000 people soon gather outside Civic
Square
28 September Police fire teargas at protestors. Main roads at Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mongkok are occupied
2 October Middlemen relay the policy of ‘no concession, no bloodshed’ to protest leaders; softliners in the regime initiate
open dialogue
3 October Violence erupts at Mongkok as anti-Occupy groups and triad members rally and attack protestors
15 October Protesters reoccupy Lung Wo Road after the police’s unexpected clearance, leading to confrontations
21 October Senior government officials hold an open dialogue with HKFS
26 October HKFS scraps an onsite referendum to decide the path for the protest
21 November Netizens march to Admiralty’s main stage, demanding an equal voice in the movement and dismissal of the
marshal system
25 November An injunction assisted by the police clears the Mongkok protest site
30 November Protestors surround the CGO
11 December An injunction assisted by the police clears the Admiralty protest site
15 December An injunction assisted by the police clears the Causeway protest site

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Hong Kong’s Social Transformation Workshop at Academia Sinica,
Taipei, 21 November 2014. The author wishes to thank the participants of the workshop for their valuable advices. The
author would also like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This work was
substantially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,
China (Project Reference No. UGC/FDS16/H04/14).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [grant number UGC/FDS16/
H04/14].

Notes on contributors
Edmund W. Cheng is an assistant professor in comparative politics at Hong Kong Baptist University and a fellow in future
cities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD in government from the London School of Economics.
He researches contentious politics, civil society, development studies and urban governance in China, Hong Kong and
Malaysia. He has published in Political Studies, China Quarterly, Modern Asian Studies, among others. He is co-editing
two books on contentious politics and implementing the World Values Survey in Hong Kong.
Wai-Yin Chan is a research associate at the Department of Government and Public Administration at The Chinese
University of Hong Kong. Her works are mostly interdisciplinary in nature, covering contentious politics, health and
politics, urban governance and community well-being and politics of cultural heritage protection. She has published in
 SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES  17

Journal of Development Studies, Sustainable Development and International Journal of Health Services. She is currently
researching the impact of self-financing sub-degree programme on social mobility of Hong Kong youth.

ORCID
Edmund W. Cheng http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9116-1082

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