ESWN on Marches in Taiwan and Hong Kong

The peripatetic China blogger ESWN remarks on marches in Taiwan and Hong Kong, claiming that there is a problem with explanations of low turnouts for pro-democracy marches in Hong Kong:

Yet, when the call went out for the people of Hong Kong to march for universal suffrage, not more than 5,000 people showed up (Comment 200703#053). There is an obvious problem here, but nobody seems to want to confront it honestly. Here is the quote from SCMP: James Sung Lap-kung, a political scientist at City University, said: "The low turnout might not necessarily mean Hong Kong people do not want universal suffrage. But it signals that they want the democrats to change their form of fighting for it."

I've highlighted Roland's comment there: the problem is "obvious." What is it?

What is he talking about? Why do the majority of the citizens who have said time and again that they want universal suffrage decline to turn out for a well-publicized demonstration march towards that goal? The organizers of these marches have never answered this question satisfactorily. Perhaps they do not know how to or perhaps they don't want to state the obvious.

One wonders -- what is the "obvious" thing going unstated? I ask this question because there were anti-war demonstrations in the US the other day that attracted only thousands, yet the majority of Americans oppose the Iraq war. Looking at ESWN's numbers of 5,000 marchers out of a pool of 4.2 million democracy supporters, that works out to 0.00119% of the pool present. Using a US population of 270 million, if at least 135 million oppose the war, we'd expect a turnout of at least 160,000 around the US yesterday. With just a 1% turnout, 1.35 million people should have clogged US cities yesterday. From what I can see, we were nowhere near either figure. Similarly, the Shih Ming-teh-led anti-Chen demonstrations here last year quickly peaked at a hundred thousand, and then fell to a few thousand on the weekends, much less on the weekdays, despite the millions of pro-KMT types in northern Taiwan and the widespread practice among the pro-China parties of paying demonstrators. Opposition to gay marriage is the majority position in the US, but demonstrations against it do not draw large numbers.

The sad fact is that low turnouts at demonstrations are a statistical norm for well-supported causes around the world. Perhaps ESWN should run some numbers for turnouts around the world and give us some comparisons. Maybe he'll turn up something that makes the turnout in Hong Kong an "obvious" problem, but perhaps also he might be surprised to find that what happened in Hong Kong is perfectly normal and the reasons for it incredibly prosaic.

Those are the reasons that I came up with. There may be others. so maybe these comments will generate the usual criticisms that I hate democracy and freedom. But what is your explanation as to why 5,000 people showed up for the march when public opinion polls showed that 60% of the population are for universal suffrage? If you can solve that puzzle, then you will get 60% of 7 million people = 4.2 million people to march for universal suffrage. How can that sort of people power be stopped?

How indeed?

UPDATE: I deleted comments similar to Raj's here at the Peking Duck. But he speaks for many thoughtful supporters of democracy around Asia:

Roland, did you ever consider that your thinly-veiled hostility towards democracy in HK and constant attempts to undermine it is the source of such comments? If you do actually believe in HK democracy (i.e. the end of the functional constituencies, 1 vote per person and only direct elections) maybe you could actually show that - just for once.

Dream on, Raj.

[Taiwan] [ESWN] [Hong Kong]