How the Umbrella Revolution Could Win

I’m watching Hong Kong’s “umbrella revolution” from afar and wondering how an assemblage of unarmed students and professionals might succeed in wresting change from a dictatorship that has consistently and ruthlessly repressed other challenges to its authority for decades. I have already said that I expect the state to repress again and think it unlikely that China’s Communist regime will bend sharply or break in response to this particular challenge at this particular moment. But unlikely doesn’t mean impossible, and, like many observers, I hope for something better.

How could something better happen? For me, Kurt Schock’s Unarmed Insurrections remains the single most-useful source on this topic. In that 2005 book, Schock compares successful and failed “people power” movements from the late twentieth century to try to identify patterns that distinguish the former from the latter. Schock clearly sympathizes with the nonviolent protesters whose actions he describes, but that sympathy seems to motivate him to make his analysis as rigorous as possible in hopes of learning something that might inform future movements.

Schock’s overarching conclusion is that structure is not destiny—that movement participants can improve their odds of success through the strategies and tactics they choose. In this he echoes the findings of his mentors, who argued in a 1996 book (p. 15) that “movements may be largely born of environmental opportunities, but their fate is heavily shaped by their own actions.” Schock’s theoretical framework is also openly influenced by the pragmatic advocacy of Gene Sharp, but his analysis confirms the basic tenets of that approach.

So, which strategies and tactics improve the odds of movement success? On this, Schock writes (p. 143, emphasis added):

The trajectories of unarmed insurrections are shaped by the extent to which interactions between challengers, the state, and third parties produce shifts in the balance of power. The probability that an unarmed insurrection will tip the balance of power in favor of the challengers is a function of its resilience and leverage. By remaining resilient in the face of repression and effecting the withdrawal of support from or pressure against the state through its dependence relations, the state’s capacity to rule may be diminished, third-party support for the movement may be mobilized, and the coherence of the political or military elite may fracture, that is, the political context may be recast to one more favorable to the challenge.

Resilience refers to the movement’s capacity to keep mobilizing and acting in the face of attempts to repress or disperse it. Leverage refers to the movement’s ability to get constituencies on whose support the regime depends—security forces, local business and political leaders, labor groups, sometimes foreign governments and markets—to support their cause, either directly, through participation or the provision of other resources, or indirectly, through pressure on the regime to reform or concede.

On makes movements resilient, Schock’s analysis points (p. 143) to “decentralized yet coordinated organizational networks, the ability to implement multiple actions from across the three methods of nonviolent action [protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and nonviolent intervention], the ability to implement methods of dispersion as well as methods of concentration, and tactical innovation.”

Schock concludes his study with a list of six lessons that nonviolent challengers might draw from successes of the past about how to improve their own odds of success. Paraphrased and summarized, those six lessons are:

• Set clear and limited goals. “The goals of movements should be well chosen, clearly defined, and understood by all parties to the conflict. The goals should be compelling and vital to the interests of the challenging group, and they should attract the widest possible support, both within society and externally… Precise goals give direction to the power activated by a movement and inhibit the dispersion of mobilized energies and resources.”
• Adopt oppositional consciousness and build temporary organizations. “Oppositional consciousness is open-ended, nontotalizing, and respectful of diversity, and it facilitates the mobilization of a broad-based opposition.” Oppositional consciousness also “rejects permanent, centralized organizations and vanguard parties, opting for united front politics, shifting alliances, and temporary organizations that engage in struggles as situations arise.”
• Engage in multiple channels of resistance. Here, Schock focuses on the value of pairing actions through institutional (e.g., elections) and non-institutional (e.g., street demonstrations) channels. In other words, attack on as many fronts as possible.
• Employ multiple methods of nonviolent action. “Struggles for political change should not depend on a single event, however momentous, but rather should focus on the process of shifting the balance of political power through a range of mutually supporting actions over time.”
• Act in multiple spaces and places of resistance. In addition to public rallies and demonstrations, activists can employ methods of non-cooperation (e.g., strikes and boycotts) and try to create “liberated areas” outside the state’s control. (Nowadays, these areas might exist online as well as in physical space.)
• Communicate. “Communication among the challengers, accurate public knowledge about the movement, and international media coverage all increase the likelihood of success.”

Looking at the umbrella revolution through that lens, I’d say it is doing all of these things already—self-consciously, I would guess—and those actions seem to be having the desired effects of expanding local and international support for their movement and improving its resilience. Just today, the movement reiterated an ambitious but clear and limited set of goals that are positive and broadly appealing. Activists are working cooperatively through an array of organizations. They have built communications networks that are designed to withstand all but the most draconian attempts to shut them down. Participants are using the internet to spread knowledge about their movement, and a bevy of foreign reporters in Hong Kong are amplifying that message. The possible exception comes in the limited range of actions the movement is using. At the moment, the challenge seems to be heavily invested in the occupation of public spaces. That may change, however, as the movement persists or if and when it is confronted with even harsher repression.

More important, this uprising was not born last Friday. The longer arc of this challenge includes a much wider array of methods and spaces, including this summer’s referendum and the marches and actions of political and business elites that accompanied and surrounded them. As Jeff Wasserstrom described in a recent interview with Vox, the Occupy Central movement also connects to a longer history of pro-democracy dissent in Hong Kong under Beijing’s rule and beyond. In other words, this movement is much bigger and more deeply rooted than the occupations we’re witnessing right now, and it has already proved resilient to repeated attempts to quash it.

As Schock and Sharp and many others would argue, those shrewd choices and that resiliency do not ensure success, but they should improve prospects for it. Based on patterns from similar moments around the world in recent decades and the Communist Party of China’s demonstrated intolerance for popular challenges, I continue to anticipate that the ongoing occupations will soon face even harsher attempts to repress them than the relatively modest ones we saw last weekend. Perhaps that won’t happen, though, and if it does, I am optimistic that the larger movement will survive that response and eventually realize its goals, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Posted by Jay Ulfelder on October 1, 2014

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