56 International The EconomistNovember 16th 2019
2 protests. But none of these theories is uni-
versally helpful. The world economy faces
nothing like the troubles of a decade ago—
when fewer people took to the streets. And,
to return to the example of Chile, Tyler Co-
wen, an economist at George Mason Uni-
versity, has pointed out that income in-
equality there has actually been narrowing.
Nor is a youth bulge a satisfactory explana-
tion. Many of the marchers (in Britain and
Hong Kong, for example) are greying. As for
the foreign meddling, nobody seriously
blames a global mastermind for the unrest.
Three other factors fill some of the gaps
left by these explanations. One, little men-
tioned, is that, for all its dangers, protest
can be more exciting than the drudgery of
daily life—and when everybody else is do-
ing it, solidarity becomes the fashion. An-
other is that ubiquitous smartphones
make it easier to organise and sustain prot-
ests. Encrypted messaging apps enable
protesters to stay one roadblock ahead of
the authorities. As soon as a specially writ-
ten “anthem” for Hong Kong’s demonstra-
tors went online, shopping malls were
brought to a halt by apparently unplanned
mass renditions.
The third factor is the obvious reason
for demonstrating, that conventional po-
litical channels seem barren. In the late
1980s protesters’ usual targets were auto-
cratic governments that allowed at best
sham elections. Without a free vote, the
street was the only way to exercise “people
power”. Some of this year’s protests—
against Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria and
Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, for example—are
similar. But apparently well-functioning
democracies have also been affected.
For a number of reasons, people may
feel unusually powerless these days, be-
lieving that their votes do not matter. One
is an increasing focus on climate change.
The Extinction Rebellion movement of dis-
ruptive civil-disobedience campaigns has
struck a nerve in countries from Britain to
Australia. Carbon emissions demand in-
ternational solutions beyond the reach of
one government, let alone one vote.
Moreover, social media, besides facili-
tating protests, may be fuelling political
frustration. Its use tends to create echo
chambers and thus heighten the feeling
that the powers-that-be “never listen”. A
perhaps related phenomenon is the weak-
ening of the bargain at the heart of West-
ern-style democracy—that losers, who
may represent a majority of the popular
vote, will accept rule by the winners until
the next election. The millions on the
streets do not accept the patience that
trade-off demands.
None of these trends is likely to reverse
itself soon. So unless demonstrators give
up in frustration, this wave of protest may
be less the harbinger of a global revolution
than the new status quo. 7A
s the protestsin Hong Kong drag
on, rituals are coalescing. One oft-
repeated rite might be dubbed “the un-
furling of the banner”. As confrontation
looms, from the masked ranks of police
two step forward bearing a sign reading
“Warning: Tear Smoke”, in Chinese and
English. Then the firing starts, and
clouds swirl, stinging and choking. Aside
from a few wearing masks, the crowd
scatters, with the police in pursuit.
Many demonstrators have experi-
enced something like it. Indeed, Hong
Kong is a relatively modest user. In the
first five months of protests, its police
fired nearly 6,000 rounds of tear-gas—
far fewer than were used in Paris in a
single day last December against gilets
jaunes(yellow-jacket) protesters.
The term “tear-gas” covers a range of
chemicals, of which the most widely
used include o-chlorobensylidene malo-
nonitrile (cs), oleoresin capsicum (oc, or
pepper spray) and 1-chloroacetophenone
(cn). The gases are in fact powders. New
variants are designed to disperse slowly.
Defenders claim that it saves lives.
Tired, twitchy, scared cops armed with
tear-gas will kill fewer people than those
carrying only lethal weapons. After
months of growing violence, only on
November 8th did the protests in Hong
Kong lead to a death. Alex Chow, a stu-
dent, perished after falling from a ledge
in a car park while fleeing tear-gas. By
contrast, in Iraq more than 300 peoplehave died since October, largely because
the authorities are more willing to use
live ammunition.
Even so, tear-gas is controversial.
Anna Feigenbaum of the University of
Bournemouth, author of a history of the
stuff, argues that it is “bad for democra-
cy”. She says it “allows the threshold of
acceptable violence to be lowered and so
avoids a deliberative process.”
Bizarrely, chemicals that are so often
used on civilians are banned for military
use. Tear-gas was first used in battle
during the first world war. The use of
such gases in that conflict led to their
outlawing under the Geneva Protocol of- Armies skirted the ban at times—
America used csgas in Vietnam. But the
ban on military use was also part of the
Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993.
After the first world war, tear-gas
became a popular “riot-control agent” in
America and the British empire. Hong
Kong police are following procedures
devised by British colonial administra-
tors. The War Office required a “declared
intention to use tear-gas and adequate
warnings” be given to opponents. The
obfuscatory term “smoke” was promot-
ed. In the words of Henry Duffield Craik,
a governor of Punjab under the British
Raj from 1938 to 1941, “Gas is a much more
alarming term, as it suggests something
resembling the poison gas used by the
Germans in the last war.”
The short-term effects of tear-gas are
unpleasant, but diminish quickly. Little
is known about the long-term impact
(clinical trials are impossible). But the
dangers come more from its misuse than
from the gas itself. Brian Castner, a weap-
ons investigator for Amnesty Interna-
tional, a human-rights watchdog, says
certain conditions must be met: that
there is a way for a crowd to disperse;
that the area is well ventilated; and that
the gas is fired into the ground in front of
protesters, not in the air or at their
heads—especially when the canisters are
large and may be lethal, as in Iraq.
Even if these guidelines are followed,
and they often are not, tear-gas is indis-
criminate. In Hong Kong it is estimated
that 88% of the population have been
exposed to gas in recent weeks. Many of
them presumably have asthma, lung
disease and other ailments, and thus
suffer more than others from the effects
of tear-gas. The use of tear-gas is, to say
the least, riskier than it first appears.
A crying shame
Tear-gasHONG KONG
Banned in warfare, tear-gas has become the default response to rowdy protestsGas! Gas! Quick, boys!