How Hong Kong’s YEC Turned a Consumer Body Into the Body Politic
Author: Henry W. Leung | UC Berkeley School of Law | J.D. Candidate 2021 | Posted: November 23, 2020
Public faith in government is at a low; civil rights are abused with impunity, and the pandemic has shifted public health responsibilities to the people themselves. Meanwhile, communities are turning to the private sector to provide for the public welfare[1] or as platforms for enabling the public good.[2] While companies are under immense pressure—those perceived as loyal only to profit face massive boycotts and buycotts[3]—some that have prioritized social purpose are being rescued from the economic downturn by community stakeholders.[4]
If this sounds familiar, it is not because I am describing brand activism in the U.S. corporate landscape; no, I am describing the Yellow Economic Circle (“YEC”), which took off with Hong Kong’s grassroots protest movement in 2019.[5] Those protests, which persist today despite a new National Security Law criminalizing dissent locally and abroad,[6] are underpinned by a crisis of governance and autonomy. A recent plot point in that crisis was the failure to win universal suffrage in the Umbrella Movement protests of 2014.[7] The implications of a private-sector push toward social purpose are thus especially profound, against the backdrop of a quasi-nation whose political leader is called the Chief Executive and not democratically elected.
More than a negative system of boycotts—which are not new to protest economics or to retrospective accountability[8]—the YEC is a positivist network built around shared social values and economic solidarity. After a National Security Law raid on the newspaper offices of pro-democratic Apple Daily, the paper’s stock prices multiplied fourfold overnight in a show of support by stakeholders.[9] Apps like WhatsGap mapped local restaurants according to their stances on the protests.[10] In addition, some restaurants created an internal patronage network with cross-redeemable coupons, a virtue-signaling the police treated as evidence of dissidence.[11] Furthermore, beyond offering free meals or temporary shelter from tear gas, some business offices have even become overnight “safe houses” or de facto orphanages for young protesters.[12]
There are, of course, significant differences between the YEC and its corollaries in the U.S.; notable is the YEC’s decentralized focus on the grassroots rather than the C-suite. Still, commentators have drawn comparisons to a “Black economy” emerging out of the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S.,[13] which corresponds directly with investor-side ESG responses.[14]
More importantly, we see the private sector as a feedback loop responding to how government action has failed to remedy (in the case of the U.S.) or has outright antagonized (in the case of Hong Kong) systemic social ills. Hong Kong’s case may seem like a study in extremity; there, the people believe “[w]e cannot count on [the government], so we have to help ourselves,”[15] such that consumer mobilization has become a practical alternative to universal suffrage.[16] However, the YEC also illuminates something more profound than its particular circumstances: that in a democratic crisis, the political body transcends a traditional constituency of electoral units; it becomes a mass of economic stakeholders. Rather than ballots in hand, the people are holding their wallets and daily habits. For that reason, those invested in the rise of brand activism and corporate purpose in the U.S. will do well to keep a close eye on the YEC’s parallel innovations and desperations.
[1.] Albert Han and Brian Wong, Coronavirus: mask giveaways in Hong Kong draw thousands, S. CHINA MORNING POST (Feb. 10, 2020), https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3049849/coronavirusmask- giveaways-hong-kong-draw.
[2.] Shanghu xu deng guanggao cheng pingguo tongluren shengyin manzai baozhi (商戶續登廣告撐《蘋果》 同路 人聲音滿載報紙) [(Merchants continue advertising to support Apple Daily, filling newspaper with allies’ voices], APPLE DAILY (Aug. 15, 2020), https://hk.appledaily.com/local/20200815/YDG3FI4CRZCXVLI46Q3Q454T7Q/ (newspaper becoming privatized space for “Lennon Walls”).
[3.] Edward Wong, Hong Kong Protesters Are Targeting Starbucks, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 15, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/business/hong-kong-starbucks-vandalism.html.
[4.] Sheridan Prasso, Hong Kong’s Businesses Show Their Pro-Democracy Colors, BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK (May 20, 2020), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-05-20/hong-kong-protesters-helped-local-businessessurvive-coronavirus.
[5.] The YEC is sometimes also called the “yellow economy.” More than a year later, there is still a dearth of English language articles on the subject, likely due to the YEC’s local Cantonese character as much as to security precautions in the movement.
[6.] See, e.g., Samuel Chu, Why Is China Coming After Americans Like Me in the U.S.?, Opinion, N.Y. TIMES (Aug. 10, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/opinion/china-hong-kong-arrest.html.
[7.] See Wilfred Chan, The Infinite Heartbreak of Loving Hong Kong, THE NATION (May 23, 2020), https://www.thenation.com/article/world/hong-kong-china-national-security-law (giving history of political losses).
[8.] See generally CHRISTOPHER H. ACHENS & LARRY M. BARTELS, DEMOCRACY FOR REALISTS: WHY ELECTIONS DO NOT PRODUCE RESPONSIVE GOVERNMENT (2017) (critiquing both the “folk” theory of Athenian democracy and the“retrospective” theory of voting out politicians as a referendum on past performance).
9. Apple Daily: Company sees huge rise in stock after crackdown, BBC NEWS (Aug. 11, 2020),https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53732436.
10. Mike Cherney and Rachel Yeo, In Divided Hong Kong, Apps Help to Avoid Eating With the Enemy, WALL ST. J. (Nov. 7, 2019), https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-divided-hong-kong-apps-help-to-avoid-eating-with-the-enemy-11573122605; see also Aimee Chanthadavong, Google removes WhatsGap from app store, ZDNET (Jan. 16, 2020), https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-removes-whatsgap-from-app-store.
11. Laurie Wen, Tear-Gas Gelato, Foulmouthed Mooncakes and Other Foods Fit for a Revolution, Opinion, N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 9, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/sunday/hong-kong-protests-food.html (“‘He has restaurant coupons!’ [a police] officer said. ‘He must be a front liner!’ Gary was arrested.”).
12. Id. (“By August, [an advertising worker] was serving 30 to 40 dinners daily and several people were crashing overnight on the floor of his workspace. [He] started calling the office — a hip loft with gunmetal slate floors and shelves filled with collectible toys — a “safe house.”).
13. Tiffany Lung, The ‘Black’ Economy: How Protests Will Influence Shopper Spending, FORBES (Jun. 12, 2020), https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiffanylung/2020/06/12/the-black-economy-how-protests-will-influence-shopperspending/#7bf5819d7601.
14. See, e.g., RACIAL JUSTICE INVESTING, https://www.racialjusticeinvesting.org/our-statement (last visited Sep. 21, 2020) (statement committing to “financing Black entrepreneurs, cooperatives, community land trusts”).
15. Mag Szeto, Hong Kong’s Protest Economy, NAT’L REV. (Apr. 17, 2020), https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/hong-kong-protest-economy/.
16. Cf. Simon Shen, How the Yellow Economic Circle Can Revolutionize Hong Kong, THE DIPLOMAT (May 19, 2020), https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/how-the-yellow-economic-circle-can-revolutionize-hong-kong