The Milk Tea Alliance — an uphill battle against the authoritarian paradigm
The Milk Tea Alliance — an uphill battle against the authoritarian paradigm
WRITTEN BY ROGER LEE HUANG
30 August 2022
More than two years since its innocuous beginnings, the Milk Tea Alliance, once a media darling, has largely disappeared from international headlines and its visibility has waxed and waned. Besides the occasional resurgence — most recently when thousands of Thai social media users flocked to a post on the official Facebook account of the Chinese Embassy in Thailand to mock China’s condemnation of US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to Taiwan — the Milk Tea Alliance has thus far been unable to sustain the same level of intensity.
Originating from a ‘meme war’ between ‘little pink’ Chinese nationalists and Thai netizens, Hong Kongers and Taiwanese — and later Burmese — joined the Alliance, which is best understood as a decentralised, pro-democracy online political community. As an abstract, leaderless community, the Milk Tea Alliance has no membership criteria, undefined parameters, and its activities are unclear in scope. In practical terms, any individual with Internet access can write a post or set up a social media account to indicate their affiliation to — or support for — the Alliance. Beyond the #MilkTeaAlliance, various hashtags have been included in the language of this online community, the #WhatsHappeningIn (followed by the country’s name) has become a particularly popular hashtag used to inform supporters of planned activities and news updates, or to document state crimes and violence. On occasions, this imagined online political community’s activities have expanded to physical mobilisation in the form of street protests, flash mobs, and solidarity rallies.
This fluidity has allowed the Milk Tea Alliance to attract an eclectic group of individuals, including members with divergent views and even contradictory political agendas who together can imagine that they are a united political community. From both supporters and opponents of Donald Trump, opportunistic Hindu nationalists, and high profile diplomats, to peaceful protestors and armed militants, these diverse netizens share a distrust of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence over their respective societies and a rejection of the authoritarian model that the CCP regime exemplifies.
Authoritarian obstacles and the state of Alliance members
Despite the feel-good narratives in early media reports about the significance of the Alliance — with many international reports declaring that Thai humour had triumphed against the dogmatic responses from Chinese nationalists — authoritarian establishments continue to dominate in most of the countries considered to be part of the Milk Tea Alliance, with little headway for a more pluralistic outlook.
While the Milk Tea Alliance initially captured the imagination of global audiences, it has thus far been unable to consistently mobilise a critical mass to dislodge their respective authoritarian establishments.
Taiwan, the only democracy in the Milk Tea Alliance community, now faces a much more confident and aggressive authoritarian China that poses a credible existential threat to Taiwanese democracy. In the last few years, China has increasingly expanded and normalised its grey zone tactics, attempting to break Taiwan’s democratic spirit. The single-party state regularly uses political, economic, and military coercion to warn the international community against supporting Taiwan, with the explicit intention of isolating the island nation.
Utilising Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan as a pretext, China carried out its largest live-fire military exercise near Taiwan, with the unprecedented launching of missiles over Taiwan, five of which landed in Japanese waters. International stakeholders, including major multinational corporations, have also been co-opted, many advancing Chinese authoritarian worldviews by actively embracing the politics of erasure which disappear Taiwan’s name in public discourses. The latest setback is the cancellation of the WorldPride 2025, with InterPride, a US-based international LGBTIQ advocacy group, allegedly demanding that the Taiwanese organisers drop the name ‘Taiwan’ from the WorldPride 2025 event, presumably to avoid confronting the ‘fragile hearts’ of Chinese nationalists.
In Thailand, the most active member of the Alliance, the old political order continues to subjugate Thai society by silencing government critics and punishing activists. The government has adopted repressive tactics to end street protests and returned to the widespread abuse of its punitive lèse-majesté law to silence critics and activists. Since November 2020, more than 200 people have been charged with this draconian law, including most recently the handing down of a six-year prison sentence to the pro-democracy musician Parinya Cheewinkulpathom, for his 2016 Facebook posts. The coalition of monarchy-military-big businesses continues to retain the support and loyalty of a bureaucratic system including the country’s powerful courts, with little leverage for the popular opposition to force the autocrats to concede to any genuine democratisation of the country’s corrupted, authoritarian system. Without a fundamental realignment of the country’s social, economic, and political institutions, the prospects for a more just and democratic Thailand remain bleak.
Once known as “Asia’s World City”, Hong Kong’s socio-political space has been obliterated following the passage of the National Security Law in 2020. Beijing’s interference in the city’s legal and political system has effectively muzzled the popular press, purged the limited multiparty system that previously existed, and snuffed out civil society spaces. The dire political environment, together with the enforcement of stringent COVID-19 measures, has led to a significant exodus. The most recent government figures saw the sharpest decline of 1.6 per cent of the city’s population, a new record since data was first collected in 1961. In 2022, the sole candidate John Lee, a former police officer and a key figure that supported the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill and the 2020 National Security Law, was appointed as Chief Executive. Ostensibly to counter misinformation, the Hong Kong Police Force revamped its Public Relations Wing in mid-August explicitly declaring that they would be actively monitoring the digital space 24 hours a day. Given the already decimated space for media freedom in the city, this is an ominous sign that a new censorship regime will inhibit the digital space with significant ramifications for politically active Hong Kongers who communicate with the diaspora and other international stakeholders.
The Alliance’s future
As a latecomer to the Alliance, Myanmar’s ‘membership’ only came about after the February 2021 military coup, which saw the suspension of the military’s disciplined democratic system. At the height of the Milk Tea Alliance’s popularity following the immediate days of the coup, carnival-like mass protests took place in different parts of the country. However, a year after the coup, sustained public defiance has become increasingly rare in major cities, as state violence has escalated to new heights. The military crackdown has returned to its worst instincts, actively purging all opposition to its rule. Conservative estimates suggest at least 2,000 individuals have been murdered by the junta since the coup and more than 15,000 political prisoners arrested. Worryingly, after a thirty-four-year hiatus, the junta has also revived capital punishment in the country, executing four political prisoners, including well-known veteran pro-democracy activist Ko Jimmy and a rapper-turned MP Phyo Zeya Thaw. As violence continues to escalate in the country, a negotiated settlement, which always appeared unlikely, seems even more remote. Myanmar’s political future remains tumultuous.
While the Milk Tea Alliance initially captured the imagination of global audiences, it has thus far been unable to consistently mobilise a critical mass to dislodge their respective authoritarian establishments. The intensification of state violence and coercion has diminished pro-democracy protest movements in Hong Kong, Myanmar, and Thailand, which is mirrored in the reduced online activities of the Milk Tea Alliance. Yet despite these challenges, this online community has carved a niche space for those determined digital activists to persevere with their pro-democracy advocacy. Pro-democracy netizens have persisted in maintaining the visibility of the Alliance to ensure that the Asian-centric digital-based transnational solidarity network remains relevant in the global discourse highlighting the challenges posed by the expansion of global authoritarian practices. Its greatest success is the mobilisation and political awakening of a new generation of digital natives that have successfully linked their own domestic political agenda and general distrust of authoritarian establishments in their quest for pan-Asian democratisation.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Roger Lee Huang is lecturer in terrorism studies and political violence with the Department of Security Studies and Criminology, Macquarie University. He has broad research interests in the politics, international relations, and security of East and Southeast Asia. He has previously worked at Lingnan University (Hong Kong), the Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan and Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and has interned with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Yangon, Myanmar. He is the author of The Paradox of Myanmar’s Regime Change. Image credit: Flickr/Prachatai.