Author: Cho Yin Yong

Since last month (and my blog post about Hong Kong), the Hong Kong protests have seen a significant increase in the violent tactics from police and protesters. In the past week, the Hong Kong police force tried to siege Hong Kong universities, which is among the top universities of the world; they have shown a bigger willingness to fire real bullets at their citizens; and protesters have resorted to climbing sewers to escape selective prosecution. So, five months in of protests, should the people still be hopeful? By applying the theoretical model of cascades, I argue from a game theory and social networks point of view that the people will not back down from their demands.

One of the protests slogan in the ongoing protests is “Don’t condemn, don’t cut ties” (in Cantonese: 不譴責、不割席). The reason behind this is the more people involved in the movement, the more effective it is. We can use game theory to model this:

	Be part of movement	Condemn the protests
Be part of movement	a, a	0,0
Condemn the protests	0,0	b, b

In the above model, the variable a is some positive outcome, while the variable b is some negative outcome. It is clear that if both is part of the movement, there is a greater chance that change can be brought to the city. Meanwhile, if one is part of the movement and one condemns it, it does not help the cause.

Relating back to the statistics currently, it is clear that the support for the movement is still high – especially people who are under 25. We can explain this through the model of cascades with q>1/2. (We can easily make this assumption. Through votes casted in the last Legislative Council election, pro-democracy lawmakers have won a majority of votes). The cascade, especially in the younger generation can be justified as school is one of the places where influence can be spread very quickly. If n of your friends are in support of the protests – it might be in your interest to also be in support of it.

By this theory, it is expected that the popularity of the demands will continue to increase. If a significant amount of the population is in support, the government will have no choice but to fulfil them – just like a real democracy.

Source: https://m.mingpao.com/pns/%E8%A6%81%E8%81%9E/article/20190803/s00001/1564771559261/%E6%B0%91%E8%AA%BF-%E8%BF%91%E5%85%AB%E6%88%90%E6%B8%AF%E4%BA%BA%E6%94%AF%E6%8C%81%E7%8D%A8%E7%AB%8B%E8%AA%BF%E6%9F%A5-%E5%AD%B8%E8%80%85-%E5%85%83%E6%9C%97%E8%A5%B2%E6%93%8A%E5%BE%8C%E6%88%90%E8%B7%A8%E7%95%8C%E5%88%A5%E8%A8%B4%E6%B1%82-%E6%92%A4%E5%9B%9E%E4%BF%AE%E4%BE%8B%E4%B8%BB%E6%B5%81%E6%84%8F%E8%A6%8B

Hong Kong has been on global headlines since June, with 2 million (that’s a quarter of the population) marching on the streets demanding the withdrawal of the extradition bill, which has since evolved into anti-government protests . With just over 7 million people in the semi-autonomous city, some people wonder – why hasn’t the entire population turned against the government yet? Everybody has seen the police brutality and the ignorance of the government – yet, everyday on social media, there are people who choose to ignore the police-state like and authoritarian actions by the government and instead focus their attention on protesters fighting for Hong Kong’s freedoms?

It can simply be explained with the Theory of Structural Balance. It became clear through the intuition [Heider ‘46] that the “enemy of my friend, is my enemy”. Consider the following scenarios:

Protesters are blocking my way to work. I dislike them. The protesters dislike the government. Thus I support the government’s actions. (Example of exactly one edge labeled +)

The police force has stepped on my freedom (negative edge). The government controls the police force. (positive edge), thus I dislike the government.

These two intuitive examples show exactly that the Balance Theorem [Cartwright-Harary] can be applied to the situation in Hong Kong. Take note of the underlined sections of the scenarios – we can use local view to fill in this edge (without previously knowing) to achieve balance. Overall, the network is clearly separated into two notable factions – people who are in support of democracy, and people who are supporters of the Beijing controlled government.

Sources:

https://www.pori.hk/police_performance_eng

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3017622/public-increasingly-backing-radical-hong-kong-protesters