Back

Note: This article represents the view of the author and not the University of Hong Kong.

As the July 1 rally is approaching, it seems that the mass media has put its focus on the rally's slogans and the number of participants. Last year, the July 1 rally's theme was to oppose against the legislation for Basic Law Article 23, and it was widely recognized that the number of participants in the rally was 500,000. For a discussion and overview of this year's July 1 rally, it seems that it is inevitable to take the benchmark established last year as a reference.

Yet, in the author's view, just like the June Fourth Candlelight Vigil, the July 1 rally will soon become an important part of the political culture of the local civil society. Based on the author's on-site surveys conducted in the past rallies and assemblies, it was revealed that the main demand of the participants in the June Fourth Candlelight Vigil was to seek a reversion of the official stand on the incident, which was not relevant to the HKSAR Government. On the other hand, the focus of the participants in the July 1 rally was the governance of the HKSAR Government, which only had an indirect relation with the Central Government. If the NPC had not actively interpreted the Basic Law, then the question concerning the universal suffrage in 2007/08 was just like the problem arising from the local legislation for Basic Law Article 23 last year, which are both problems on the HKSAR Government. Viewing June Fourth together with July 1, this almost represents the main demand of Hong Kong people towards the "one country, two systems".

It can be expected that even after the reversion of the official stand on the June Fourth Incident in future, Hong Kong people will still have gathering in the Victoria Park once a year for some years, just like the commemoration of the May Fourth Movement, though the activities may then be jointly organized by the government and the citizens, or supported by the mainland as well.

Some days later, if the HKSAR Government's governance and the democratic development are satisfactory, will Hong Kong people still participate in rallies? Of course this is a hypothetical question. Viewing from an angle of social study, the July 1 rally has only a short history, thus it remains unknown whether it will accumulate and form a certain format and culture, just like the June Fourth Candlelight Vigil. However, from the political culture formed as a result of the June Fourth Candlelight Vigil, the July 1 rally will most probably become another stream of behavior culture motivated and developed from local community. Even if the popularity of the HKSAR Government is high, people may still make use of the rally to strengthen the people's power and demonstrate that Hong Kong society enjoys a high degree of freedom. Maybe there will be national flags, regional emblems and slogans supporting the government in the future processions.

Therefore, in the author's view, we should not stay in the level of slogans and number of participants when viewing and analyzing the July 1 rally. Instead, we should actively examine the in-depth meaning of the June Fourth Candlelight Vigil and the July 1 rally.

Looking at the public opinion surveys conducted by the Public Opinion Programme, the University of Hong Kong in recent months, since the NPC interpreted the Basic Law and the Civil Human Rights Front announced they are going to organize the July 1 rally, the people's propensity to participate in the rally seemed quite constant. As shown in Table 1, among those respondents aged 18 above, the proportion of people who stated they will definitely join the July 1 rally stayed steadily at 5-7%. Those stated they "will definitely" and "most likely will" join the rally also stayed steadily at 13-14%. Even the relations between the Central Government and the democrats start to defrost recently, it seems there is no change in the people's propensity to participate in the rally.

This brings out one possibility: Among those who will participate in this year's July 1 rally, a certain proportion of them will be those backbone forces who have participated in last year's July 1 rally as well. Basing on the public opinion figures' proportion, there will be around 150,000 people in this group, which is a very significant figure. This group of people has a clear vision, and will participate in the rally under whatever situations. They will play an important role in the future development of the July 1 rally culture.

As seen from the analysis on Table 2, for those who have participated in last year's July 1 rally and this year's January 1 rally, their propensity to join this year's July 1 rally was very high, which was much higher than those who have joined only one rally. On the other hand, for those who have not joined both rallies, their propensity to join this year's July 1 rally was very low. This result in fact matches well with the general electoral behavior. People who have voted before will always have a higher propensity to vote, and the actual turnout rate among this group of people will also be much higher than those who have never voted.

Of course, the establishment of the rally culture also needs to depend on the deployment of the organizers, as well as the response of the general public. In last year's District Council elections, though the electoral atmosphere was weak on the surface, the turnout rate has been remarkably high, causing discrepancy on the estimation basing on the pre-election surveys. In other words, there may possibly be structural changes on Hong Kong people's political participation behavior. The author will not feel surprised if the number of participants in this year's July 1 rally is more than the general estimation.

Yet, the author still believes that there should not be too much emphasis on the slogans and the number of participants when reporting and analyzing the July 1 rally. No matter what slogans the organizers advocate and whether they match with the current situation, this may merely be the one-sided thought of the organizer. What is more important is how the participants attach a constant meaning to this activity. Even though people may not chant slogans or have slogans in hand, what does it mean? Self-motivated, calm, peaceful but united action will possibly have more vitality than noisy mass movement.

After the April 11 rally, the author has written as follows, "such number crunching exercises are all meant to bring out the objective truth, not the good or bad. In an advanced and civilized society, one idea is one idea, one single opinion is one single opinion. For good ideas, we cannot afford to miss even one; but for bad practices, one is already too many." In other words, quality and quantity are questions on different layers. When analyzing the July 1 rally, both the quality of the participants and the rally's impact on the development of the local civil society have to be taken into account.

Table 1：Propensity to participate in July 1 rally

* Due to the round-off problems, the total percentage as shown in the last column may be slightly different from the direct summation of the two figures in the two columns.

Table 2：Relations between propensity to participate in July 1 rally and experiences in rallies

* Data was extracted from the 5 independent sampling surveys above conducted by Public Opinion Programme, the University of Hong Kong. The sample size was 5,135 successful cases and the average response rate was 63.4%.