The Milk Tea Alliance

Why are activists in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Burma willing to court danger to help one another?

The political situations in Burma, Thailand, and Hong Kong are radically different. Only Burma is in a state of civil war. Only Hong Kong has changed in just a few years from a place with virtually no political prisoners to one with many. Only Thailand is a monarchy with lèse majesté laws. And yet, many young activists and exiles from these three places routinely refer to a sense that their struggles are related.

Historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom met dozens of dissidents, including Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, known for his protests against compulsory Thai military service; Agnes Chow, who co-founded a political party since banned in Hong Kong, and who faces multiple arrest warrants; and Burma’s Tun Myint, who’s been involved in political activism since the 1980s. They express solidarity with one another online and on the streets, and refer to themselves as the “Milk Tea Alliance,” nodding to how they all faced online attacks from intensely nationalistic loyalists of Beijing and they all came from places where the iconic type of tea drink included a dairy component, while in mainland China the beverage did not.

How do these activists, each facing their unique situations, find common ground and sustain one another? Wasserstrom traveled around the world and tracked down these political activists, and found them connected by shared democratic values and concerns over the rising regional influence of a shared enemy—the Chinese Communist Party.