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Note: This article represents the view of the authors and not their respective universities.

On the sixth anniversary of the handover, 500,000 Hong Kongers, among whom 60% are middle class people, marched on the streets to express their discontents towards the government. It was a surprise to everyone - the government, the democrats, and the citizens themselves. For government leaders and some scholars, Hong Kong people are economic animals; they are apathetic towards politics; they think and act based upon calculation of concrete material interests rather than abstract principles; they are busy with their work; and they solve their own problems with individual rather than collective actions.

Then, why did such an "abnormal" scenario occur on July 1? How could citizens be mobilized to attend the rally? Who were the mobilizers? In this article, we attempt to answer such questions by reviewing some major results from our survey.

During the July 1 demonstration, we sent more than 20 interviewers to station at the Victoria Park and various "check points" along the marching route. Interviewees were selected following a systematic procedure. They would choose if they want to fill out the questionnaires by themselves or be assisted by an interviewer. At the end of the day, we contacted 1,323 demonstrators, all of them are 15 years old or above; 1,154 interviews were successfully completed, yielding a response rate of 87.2%. Time concerns led us to prepare a long and a short version of our questionnaire. While a few questions were included only in the long version, most questions were asked in both versions of the questionnaire. About half of the respondents filled out the short questionnaire and the other half filled out the long version. It should be noted that our results' statistical representativeness (that is, the extent to which our results represent the opinions and attitudes of the 500,000 people joining the demonstration) is ensured by our sampling procedure, though different margins of errors are associated with results based upon different numbers of respondents. For certain questions, the number of respondents was around 400-500 because they appeared only in the long questionnaire. Besides, we have also conducted a web-based survey with more than 25,000 participants, but this article will only report the survey conducted during the demonstration.

Clear goals: Discontent towards government performance

Effective mobilization is possible only if the goals of collective action are clear and considered by the potential participants as important and relevant to their interests. The organizers of the July 1 demonstration used the slogan "Against Article 23, return power to the people" to capture the aims of the demonstration. "Against Article 23" is a very concrete and clear goal. "Return power to the people" seems to be relatively more abstract. However, given the current political situation in Hong Kong, "return power to the people" can be understood as involving an opposition to Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa and a support for expanding democratic elections in Hong Kong.

If we judge by how the demonstrators shouted slogans against the Tung administration and Article 23 during the rally, their opposition to the government and Article 23 is loud and clear. Our survey strongly supports this understanding of the demonstration as involving goals that the participants themselves hold strongly. About 90% of respondents stated that they joined the demonstration in order to express their discontent towards the government and their opposition to Article 23. The strength of the opposition to Article 23 can be seen from the fact that, when asked about what citizens should do after the establishment of Article 23, 37% of the respondents favored the strategy of civil disobedience over the idea of continually fighting within the boundary of legal acceptability. Only a mere 5% of our respondents stated that citizens should accept the reality. Discontent towards the government, which basically refers to the Tung administration, is also a strongly held attitude. More than 80% of our respondents agree that Tung Chee-hwa should step down, and a similar number of people supported the idea of exercising "people's power" to force Tung to step down.

People cannot be easily mobilized unless they are already mobilizable, and citizens' mobilizability is not something that can be built up in a single week or month. The SAR government has made numerous mistakes in the past few years. Every mistake added to the mobilizability of specific groups of citizens in Hong Kong. For example, a few years ago, when Tung announced that the "85,000 housing policy" no longer existed, citizens might not have taken to the streets to express their opinions, yet they have already formed an evaluation about the government's ability.

During the SARS crisis, citizens recognized that government incompetence does not only affect their material interests, but potentially also their very life and death. As citizens regard the government as unreliable, social networks and associations were strengthened and utilized to fight against the disease, with the media playing an important monitoring role in the process. The challenge of SARS has re-produced a sense of community and a sense of common interests among Hong Kong people. When SARS receded, Article 23 re-emerged at the top of the public agenda, the way the Tung administration attempted to force the legislation despite strong opposition from the society led to the recognition that Article 23 and the Tung administration are not compatible with the common interests of Hong Kong people.

From our survey, it can be seen that the demonstrators know very clearly what they were doing. More than 90% of our respondents agreed with the view that the performance of the government is disappointing and even "intolerable." Without this basis, nothing can explain why citizens would want to go to the street. The most fundamental factor contributing to the July 1 demonstration, therefore, is government incompetence itself. The Central government, the SAR administration, and the pro-China politicians cannot ignore this fact and attribute the demonstration only to other "external factors." If they continue to be entrenched in their own way of thinking, they will only further alienate the public.

Weak organizer and a movement without heroes

Traditionally, associations play an important part in political mobilization. The Chinese Communist Party certainly understands this point. One underlying reason for one-party rule and the control of social associations and organizations is that associations can have strong mobilizing power. When being used against the regime, such mobilizing power could constitute a huge threat. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party cannot tolerate independent, not to say rival, civic associations. Yet the Party creates a full range of associations so that they can mobilize people for the cause of the Party. In Hong Kong, the leftists also understand the importance of associations, as seen in how they mobilize their supporters through various associations in the past struggles for public opinions.

But the July 1 demonstration differs from other collective actions in that the organizers played a very limited role in mobilizing the participants. The demonstration was organized by the Human Civil Rights Front, but it is questionable how much mobilizing power the coalition actually has. The HCRF is formed by more than 40 civic associations and social organizations in Hong Kong, including labor groups, women associations, grassroot and neighborhood organizations, religious associations, student groups, and so on. Among them, the two political parties, namely, Democratic Party and the Frontier, and the various professional organizations have significant amounts of experiences in mobilizing followers for collective actions. But judged by the numbers of participants in past activities of the HCRF, their mobilizing power is obviously limited. Moreover, a coalition such as HCRF is more or less an ad hoc and issue-based one; it can coordinate individual activities, but it does not have a well-developed and structured organization.

For the citizen demonstrators, the role of the organizers is not particularly clear. Which organization is the organizer of the demonstration? Who are the major figures behind the demonstration? Before the demonstration, citizens probably only had some vague ideas regarding such questions, such as the involvement of the democrats. On July 1, the organizers were engulfed by the thousands of people packing in the Victoria Park. Some organizers can be seen in the exit of the Park, yet in most places, the demonstration was not led by a centralized organization but only by the participants' self-organization. At the rally on July 11, the master of ceremony even mis-named the Human Civil Rights Front. This shows the limited familiarity the Hong Kong public has with the coalition.

Besides the limited role the organizers have, the July 1 demonstration also did not rely upon or produce individual heroes.In 1989, the Tiananmen movement was led by student groups, and in the process, individual student leaders, such as Wang Dang, have become the central icons of the movement as a whole. They are individual heroes of the movement. However, at least until now, the July 1 demonstration has not produced individual heroes, probably because most participants were self-mobilized. Had there been strong organization from top to bottom, individual heroes should have appeared, as the result of a complex interaction between the media and the organizers. However, if citizen mobilization continues to the extent that a democracy movement is reborn in the future, we believe that individual heroes may one day arise.

The interactive dynamics of interpersonal and mass communication

As civic associations are relatively weak in Hong Kong, we have to understand the formation of the July 1 demonstration as a result of a communication dynamics that involves both mass and interpersonal communication channels. Hong Kong is a pluralistic society with a dense population served by a largely liberal media system. The demonstrators on July 1 have a generally high level of education. In Hong Kong, these are the people who use the news media most frequently. Our survey finds that 65% of demonstrators read newspapers everyday, while 73% watch TV news on a daily basis. We asked demonstrators to evaluate the extent to which they were influenced by the calls for actions coming from various entities. The demonstrators regarded information and messages coming from the media as having an important influence on themselves. More than 60% of the demonstrators regard information and messages from newspaper editorials, newspaper column articles, newspaper news stories, radio talk shows, radio news, TV news and TV public affairs programs as having influence on their decision to participate in the rally.

When compared with each other, newspapers and radio seem to be more influential than TV. We believe that this is the result of the demonstrators' generally high levels of education and the particular characteristics of the media. For Hong Kong citizens as a whole, TV is the most important source of information. However, past research in Hong Kong has shown that reliance on newspaper increases with levels of education. Hence the demonstrators would report that they were influenced more by newspapers. A possible reason for the perceived influence of radio is that radio programs, especially various types of talk shows, may have carried more persuasive messages and mobilizing information. Television news and public affairs programs, which tend to hold more strongly to the norm of objectivity, may have contained fewer persuasive messages and mobilizing information.

In the run up to July 1, Apple Daily and particular program hosts on Commercial Radio have made clear attempts to mobilize the public to join the demonstration. This, of course, is related to the political stance of the paper and the program host. In fact, in Hong Kong, Oriental Daily, Apple Daily and Ming Pao are the three papers that enjoyed the largest readerships. Among the demonstrators, however, 50% of respondents said that they most frequently read Apple Daily, while Oriental Daily and Ming Pao lagged far behind at 22% and 16% respectively. At the very least, we can say that the demonstrators are not a statistically representative "sample" of newspaper readers in Hong Kong.

But it should be noted that the media can mobilize people to act without the news organizations themselves ever adopting a specific position on the issue at hand. Even when news organizations remain objective, news still carries a significant amount of persuasive messages and mobilizing information coming from different news sources. In an authoritarian country, the state often can gain a monopoly in defining social reality. In an open society such as Hong Kong, where a largely independent media and civil society exist, and various professional expert systems are well developed, the media often become the space for discursive contestations in the struggle to define reality. During the SARS crisis we witnessed how experts from the medical system in Hong Kong expressed opinions that often contradicted the views of government officials. In the debate surrounding Article 23, professionals from the legal expert system provided alternative interpretations of the Basic Law, legal procedures in general, and the draft of Article 23. These legal experts own tremendous degree of authority when legal matters are concerned. Their opinions and calls for support are likely to be persuasive, while the information they provided on Article 23 allows citizens to form opinions regarding the issue at hand. Yes, there was no "hero" in the July 1 demonstration, but the influence from prominent barristers like Alan Leong, Audrey Eu and Margaret Ng was tremendous. When Loeng and Eu took to the stage at the rally on July 9, there was enthusiastic applause from the crowd. This demonstrate the importance of professional expert systems in Hong Kong.

Intertwined with media communication, there is social communication facilitated by interpersonal connections. More than 68% of our respondents regarded the calls for actions coming from friends, colleagues and schoolmates as influential. In fact, the demonstration was not a crowd of people walking alone. Only 7% of demonstrators participated in the rally on their own, while 45% of demonstrators participated in the rally with their friends, 27% with their families, 15% with their spouses, 10% with their boyfriends or girlfriends, and 8% with their schoolmates. Again, the above mentioned argument that civic associations in Hong Kong have weak mobilizing power is illustrated by the fact that only 5% of our respondents followed the organizations or associations that they belong to in the rally. These figures inform us about the importance of social networks in mobilizing people to participate in the July 1 demonstration. We can argue that the July 1 demonstration was not a result of associational mobilization but a result of citizen self-mobilization. Had it been the former case, there should have been much more people walking with their associations.

Not every piece of information and every single message in the media would mobilize people to join the demonstration. In fact, messages and information that would discourage people to join the demonstration also existed. Some media organizations even took up a supportive stance towards the government on the issue of Article 23. For example, the three most frequently read newspapers - Apple, Oriental, and Ming Pao - have very different styles and editorial lines. Some people in the SAR government even recognized that "two and a half" newspapers in Hong Kong have already been successfully coopted, with the three aforementioned papers constitute "one and a half." Therefore, we should not attribute any kind of magical influence to an one-sidedly anti-government news media in Hong Kong. How messages and information from the news media are received is dependent upon the pre-existing attitudes of the audience, and the influence of such messages and information would be further mediated by interpersonal channels of communication.

Here, we arrive back at the point that the most fundamental root leading to the historic demonstration was the bad performance of the government in the past few years. Citizens' disappointment and anger were further aggravated by the controversy surrounding Article 23. Without this root, it is impossible for any communication media or social associations to mobilize people to act. Persuasive messages and mobilizing information are influential largely because they resonate with something that is already existing within people's mind.

In people's mind, the government has performed so bad that something has to be done, lest things become hopeless. Through communicating with their friends and colleagues, people discovered a consensus. In our survey, demonstrators who came with friends or colleagues were asked if they raised the idea of joining the demonstration first or if their friends or colleagues raised the idea first. Yet more than half of our respondents said that it is hard to say who was the first to raise the idea since the idea was commonly held. The existence of such a consensus leads to the result that very few people (8%) recognized a need not to let others know that they have joined the demonstration.

Categorized by the mode of communication, mobilization of collective behaviour can either be association-mobilized or self-mobilized. The former stresses top-down communication and influence, which go through different layers of an organization to mobilize its members and sympathizers; the latter stresses horizontal communication, which rarely stems from the core. According to this analysis, the July 1 demonstration was largely self-motivated.

Challenge after July 1: Developing political leadership in the civil society

The advantages of citizen self-mobilization include the low cost involved in organizing associations and the decentered nature of the mobilization process, which makes it difficult to be suppressed by any power center. The value of citizen self-mobilization is enhanced by the lack of a developed participatory culture in Hong Kong, and its possibility is provided by the vibrant media system. In the future, citizen self-mobilization is likely to continually play an important role behind collective actions in Hong Kong's public sphere.

Some people attribute the high levels of participation in the July 1 demonstration to media mobilization, they argue that if the government can control the media, they can prevent further popular mobilization in Hong Kong. However, as discussed above, media organizations' support is not necessary for popular mobilization. Media, after all, refer not only to a specific group of organizations but also to spaces and channels for communication. Even if the government can successfully control all major news organizations in Hong Kong, there would still be alternative space and channels that citizens can turn to. These alternative channels include interpersonal communication networks, small media such as pamphlets, and new media technologies such as the Internet. More than 80% of the demonstrators on July 1 are online users. In Hong Kong, the persistence of a free media system renders the Internet a relatively minor role in public communication, but if the mainstream mass media is controlled, it is likely that citizens will turn to alternative sources. At that time, the government would only find public opinion even more elusive, and government leaders would find themselves even more isolated from the public. China's media control did not prevent the democracy movement in 1989, and if the Hong Kong government wants to prevent citizen-government conflicts in the future, the "internal problem" has to be solved first.

Social movements resulting from citizen self-mobilization has their own romantic colors, as participants felt that the movements are the results of ideals commonly held by individuals as independent actors in the public sphere. The July 1 demonstration has touched the hearts of many Hong Kong people, not only because of the sheer number of participants, but also because of the peaceful and rational character of the demonstration. However, citizen self-mobilization also has certain weaknesses. The lack of organization renders long-term struggle difficult, and participants' reactions to evolving situations cannot be easily coordinated. In the long run, political leadership remains necessary if struggles for democracy and freedom are to be continued.

In our survey, about 60% of respondents agreed that the democracy movement in Hong Kong lacks a competent leadership. The public is ready to be mobilized for the cause of democracy, but how can public opinion be effectively organized, represented, and communicated? How can we combine the advantages of associational mobilization and citizen self-mobilization in the future? Moreover, how can we actually develop a democracy movement based upon the atmosphere created by various rallies and demonstrations in the first two weeks of July 2003? How can we maintain and expand the scope of public participation? These are the major problems facing the democracy movement in Hong Kong. Hong Kong's road to democracy is not likely to be a smooth one. Overcoming the obstacles would require the development of a credible and competent political leadership in the civil society.

"People's power": Paradigm change in Hong Kong's political communication

The July 1 demonstration brought hope and power to the Hong Kong people, its social, political and cultural significance will gradually emerge. In the past two weeks, the political ecology in Hong Kong also changed in a fundamental manner. To understand Hong Kong society, we need to change our paradigm in thinking and begin to examine the importance and role of "public opinion" in Hong Kong's political process. Obviously we need to recognize the importance of public opinion as an "independent" force. Our government was too used to twisting and manipulating public opinion, sometimes taking it seriously, sometimes taking it as non-existent. Now that the people has spoken, their voices heard in Hong Kong and Beijing. Reluctant though it may be, the government has to come face-to-face with public opinion and its representatives.

The aftermath of the demonstration made the whole event seemingly "a victory of public opinion": The internal split of the administration, the postponement of the legislation, and the re-evaluation of Hong Kong's situation by the Chinese government. All groups and media suddenly side with public opinion. It is the first time for Hong Kong people to exhibit their people's power. Though the political system did not change overnight, a partial victory was achieved in the process. More important, it may become an exemplar for political groups and individual citizens to emulate in the future. Our survey shows that about half of the participants in the July 1 demonstration have never participated in similar demonstrations before. In other words, the July 1 demonstration has given many people their first experience of demonstration, and it is an extremely positive one. As citizens accumulate their experiences in political participation, we can expect a rising tendency for people to exercise their power in the future.

The schedule for democratization in Hong Kong has long been a controversial issue. But after the demonstration in which 500,000 people marched in a peaceful manner, few could continue to argue against Hong Kong people's quality and ability to act as democratic citizens. This recognition can serve as another starting point for renewed calls for democracy.

Middle class people play an important managerial role in Hong Kong society, but they do not have their political spokespersons and their own political organizations. The July 1 demonstration can also be regarded as the starting point for middle class people to play an even more active and influential role in the political process. In fact, looking at the demographics of the demonstrators, we find that most of them regard themselves as coming from middle class families (nearly 60%); more than half of the demonstrators have college level education or above; and about 40% of them are professionals or hold managerial positions at work. How can the existing political forces incorporate the rising power of the middle class, and for what ends? The answers to such questions would further impinge upon politics in Hong Kong.

Will there be young democrats to come? Will the calls for democratization become louder and louder in the future? We find that more than 70% of the demonstrators are between 15 and 40 years old. Clearly, there is a huge group of young people favoring democratization. Among the respondents, about 60% have voted in at least one legislative council elections in the past. After the demonstration, their political attitudes would probably become even more crystallized. It is likely that they will attach a higher degree of importance to the issue of democracy when they evaluate politicians during election times. The DAB would not lose their core supporters, but they would find it much more difficult to win the undecided votes. The power different factions enjoy within the legislature will once again change.

Practices of self-censorship were pervasive in some sections of the news media after the handover. Some news organizations avoided sensitive political issues or adopted a detached and passive stance in covering the issues. This may be the result of commercial calculations, government cooptation, or changes in media ownership. Before the demonstration, some news organizations supported the government's legislation schedule, and even discouraged people to participate in the demonstration. However, after witnessing the expression of public opinion on the handover anniversary, they radically shifted their stance. In the future, the media may pay more attention to the public opinion climate when they decide upon their editorial line. After all, the commercial media in Hong Kong have to maintain their market share. At the same time, the media will continue to have a surrogate democracy function in Hong Kong, especially when the government continues to suffer from a legitimacy crisis. In the future, the media may become even more active in mobilizing public participation in fighting for democracy, though whether and how the media should intervene in the process of political development is a question that deserves closer examination and more discussions.

The July 1 demonstration is essentially a case of "local" collective action. It involves and contributes to the reconfirmation of the participants' Hong Kong identity. Hong Kong people have not enjoyed the feeling of pride for years. The demonstration gave Hong Kong people renewed self-confidence and hope. Local identification and local interests will once again become key factors in future social developments in Hong Kong, and they will also influence how the media would position themselves.