The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia's Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing

by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

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.

Genres: China, Asia, History

104 pages, Paperback

Published June 10, 2025

About the author

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, is a modern Chinese social and cultural historian, with a strong interest in connecting China's past to its present and placing both into comparative and global perspective. He has taught and written about subjects ranging from gender to revolution, human rights to urban change.

His work has received funding from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation.

Reviews

[Michael Erickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Southeast Asia is about as geographically far as you can get from the northeast US (barring Western Australia), so I don't feel too bad about this part of the world being in my geopolitical blindspot. I knew the broad strokes going into it, but it was interesting getting a more in-depth analysis of events I'd only heard of in passing over the past few years.

The main foci center around pro-democracy protests in Burma/Myanmar, Hong Kong, and Thailand within the past ten years or so. The first two I was more familiar with because of the infamous house arrest shenanigans around Aung San Suu Kyi and how the Hong Kong protests were one of the biggest international news stories right before the initial COVID outbreak. The chapter dedicated to Thailand was pretty informative to me however; as an outsider I only know the country as a tourist hotspot and one of the only places in Asia with marriage equality, but apparently that's part of an intentional charm offensive by the government to gloss over their international image and distract from domestic unease.

Ultimately the book ends on kind of a downer, which I guess is the realist take. China just has too much momentum and influence in the macroregion for even coordinated protest movements to do much about - a point some interviewed protesters even admit - but the argument is that it's still worth making the effort because it provides something for future protest movements down the line to pick up from. The Prague Spring leading the way for the Velvet Revolution and subsequent, separate apartheid protest movements in South Africa are pointed to as successful examples of this approach. Time will tell if the same will hold true in Southeast Asia, but as of right now it looks like it's too soon to know.

[Linda]

This is a terrific introduction to an important phenomenon, that of transnational protest movements, in particular, how Southeast Asian, Hong Kong and Taiwan's social-media and pop culture savvy young activists inspire and reinforce each other's fight against autocracy - and what the Hunger Games and a particular hot drink have to do with transnational solidarity.

[Alexander Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

The number 8964 is indelibly printed in my mind: June 4, 1989 — the date most associated with the Tiananmen Massacre (a bit of a misnomer, and misdating, the violent repression of the Chinese student movement happened mostly outside of Tiananmen Square, and spanned a number of days across the country).

8888, though, was a new one to me. Less than a year before Tiananmen , Burmese troops under Junta leader Ne Win fired on student democracy protestors participating in the 8888 uprising, so named for the August 8 rally that kicked off the movement.

Some historians might draw a parallel and call it quits — Wasserstrom, instead, shows how these two mirrored tragedies intersect. A young man in the crowd that day, Tun, goes on to fight as a guerrilla along the Thai border. (Tun's experience had me recall Hai Fan's book Delicious Hunger, on his decade+ as a Maoist insurgent on the Malay peninsula.) Later, Tun is disillusioned by Aung San Suu Kyi — a leader of the 8888 Uprising — for her complicity in the persecution of the Rohingya people. Another activist, with the chosen name of Nicky Diamond, compares the Burmese state's treatment of the Rohingya to that of the Uyghurs in China. Tiananmen looms above all.


This is the second of Wasserstrom's micro-histories that I've read, after Vigil, a heartrending tale of Hong Kong. I highly recommend for all those looking for a whirlwind tour of the struggle for democracy in Asia, impeccably sourced, and with a cool narrative flow. If for nothing else, read for the story of Netiwit — a truly extraordinary Thai man (who I will avoid saying more about to prevent spoilers!).

[Percy Yue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can still vividly recall the sense of excitement surrounding the formation of the Milk Tea Alliance, when people in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand appeared to stand united in a common front against suppression and authoritarian oppression imposed by an exxx state. That moment, however, has long since passed. In the end, we failed, save perhaps for Taiwan, which still retains a faint glimmer of hope.

As for the book, it did not evoke anything close to that former sense of intensity or resonance. The discussion and analysis are superficial. The author merely offers a descriptive summary of the attempts at resistance by young people in Hong Kong and Thailand, without any meaningful depth or insight. Burma is mentioned, yet it is unclear how it was ever part of the Milk Tea Alliance in any substantive sense. Overall, the work reads as a patchwork of loosely assembled facts, hastily turned into a book, which is deeply disappointing.

This is particularly evident in the chapter on Hong Kong. It is devoid not only of analytical substance, but also of spirit.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the perfect book for people who don't understand the connection between the political struggles of Thailand, Hong Kong, and Myanmar. Wasserstrom is a clear, forceful, and incisive writer. He uses personal stories to demonstrate how younger people have fought regimes by cooperating (even when they cannot speak the same languages) and using cultural references (for example, Katniss's salute from the Hunger Games). This book is SO short but SO smart. I learned a ton and it changed the way I read the newspapers.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not care for the author’s organization of the material. The author’s purpose felt elusive at times. I wondered if some of what was included was relevant and how it tied back to the author’s main idea. References to the Hunger Games and the history of the three finger salute were repetitive. What I was able to take away was that the struggle for democracy has a long and complex history; it is truly pervasive across the world.

[Abe Niederhauser · Rating 4 out of 5]

What links pro-democracy and human rights advocates in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Myanmar? Their shared love of milk tea, of course. In The Milk Tea Alliance, historian Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom presents the details of the movement since 2020, focusing mainly on Thailand but also covering Hong Kong and Myanmar. Taiwan hovers in the background but isn’t given its own chapter. A short but interesting read.