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Opinion | Why the #MilkTeaAlliance movement has little appeal to Vietnamese youth
- Vietnamese leaders have both placated tech-savvy youth and maintained their grip on online discourse in a country that currently boasts some 72 million social media users
- But unlike Beijing, Hanoi doesn’t have the political and tech heft to launch campaigns to boost youth nationalism online
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Ten years ago, when Egypt and Tunisia saw dramatic uprisings after anti-government protesters galvanised support online, Vietnam’s leaders were likely to have been concerned over a possible ripple effect on the country’s social media users.
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Today, they face a similar worry with the #MilkTeaAlliance – a social media-fuelled pro-democracy youth movement that has in recent years gained traction in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Myanmar, and to some extent, Malaysia.
A key tenet of the #MilkTeaAlliance has been to push back against autocratic governments, such as the Chinese model after which Vietnam is believed to have followed.
Against that backdrop, outsiders may wonder why Vietnam’s internet-savvy youth have remained an outlier in the #MilkTeaAlliance. How have Vietnam’s leaders afforded to stave off such a movement? Will anti-government sentiment materialise any time soon in the country?
A closer look at how social media and geopolitics have become increasingly interwoven provides some clues.
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