Be Water, My Friend: Hong Kong’s 2019 Anti-Extradition Protests

The 2019 wave of protests in Hong Kong, while reproducing the patterns of earlier social movements against perceived political pressure from the Chinese mainland, spiraled into an unprecedented escalation. This paper investigates the political, socio-economic and cultural factors that triggered the anti-extradition protests in 2019 and generated an environment in which participants appeared to deliberately accept the risks of violent confrontation. In particular, it analyses the movement’s symbolic repertoires, organizational features and resistance techniques, which responded to increasingly sophisticated techniques of authoritarian surveillance. Based on readings of the wider social movement literature, the paper juxtaposes global and local perceptions of protest events on the ground.