ABSTRACT
Chapters 2 to 5 documented and analyzed the social and historical contexts for the July 1, 2003 protest, the mobilization processes behind it, and how political happenings and public discourses in the latter half of 2003 helped transform the protest into the beginning of a pro-democracy movement. After the January 1, 2004 protest, another 200,000 Hong Kong citizens went on the street on July 1, 2004, calling for direct elections of the Chief Executive in 2007 (although such a move was already ruled out by the National People’s Congress of China in April 2004). About 30,000 people participated in the July 1 protest in 2005. Then, on December 4, 2005, about two weeks before the Legislative Council was scheduled to vote on the government’s political reform bill, 100,000 people came out to protest against the failure of the government to provide a concrete timetable for institutionalizing direct elections of the Chief Executive. The demonstration succeeded in pressurizing the democrats within the legislature to unite in voting down the government’s reform bill. Then, on July 1 of 2006 and 2007 respectively, about 50,000 people joined what had by then become an annual protest event.
