t began like any internet fight. Vachirawat “Bright” Cheeva-aree, a popular Thai actor of American and Chinese descent, liked a tweet of an image that labeled Hong Kong as a country in April 2020. Chinese netizens dug up his girlfriend’s Instagram profile, and interpreted one of her earlier posts as support for Taiwan’s independence. When they began a round of internet bullying, Bright’s Thai fans rallied to the couple’s defense, and insults soon shifted from the personal to the national. What could have been a pedestrian squabble instead evolved into geopolitical flame war across multiple social media platforms under the hashtag “Milk Tea Alliance”, with the potential to develop into a pan-Asian call for reform. How did this snowball when other hashtags died?
The origin of the term “Milk Tea Alliance” is hard to trace, but easy to explain. In Asia, tea is the social beverage. Thailand has the brightly-colored Cha Nom Yen, Taiwan is famous for boba tea, Hong Kong makes its own with silk stockings, and India’s masala chai is as spicy as it is loved. Malaysia pulls its Teh Tarik in long pours, while Xinjiang, Mongolia and Tibet make buttery versions under the names of Sut Chai, Suutei Tsai, and Cha Süma. Across East Asia and Southeast Asia, each region possesses their unique version of milk tea, and all are connected in some way by history, ethnicity, or geography.
The term has become a shorthand for an online kinship shared across borders by a young, social, and disgruntled audience in Asia. Before the term started trending, members of this audience already had much in common. They shared the same worries about steep economic competition, a cynicism against ruling elites, and memories of life under authoritarian rule. They share the same pop culture “canon” based on popular TV shows translated into different languages, and in a region where multilingualism is the norm, translate memes and news for each other. Having grown up during the social media explosion, each person also tends to own an account on different platforms, and their real-life opinions flow into their online presence. All of these factors have combined to create a powerful in-group identity that transcends national and linguistic borders.
When Chinese users attacked the Thai king in an earlier internet spat, Thais responded with gleeful agreement. They themselves cannot criticize their king due to Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws, laws that have also sparked protests for monarchical reformation and a new constitution. Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates included the term "Milk Tea Alliance" in their support for Thai protests, and Thai protestors responded by flying the Black Bauhinia flag, the flag of Hong Kong on a black background and symbol of its pro-democratic movement. Taiwan itself has a large population of migrant Thai workers, and Taiwan echoed Hong Kong’s commemoration of Tiananmen by staging its own vigil. Activists in the three countries retweet, share, explain, and comment on each other’s posts in English, allowing them to bypass linguistic barriers posed by local slang and opening up the conversation to media beyond the region.
Observers from other countries soon joined in. A spokesperson of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put up a poster celebrating Taiwan’s National Day near China’s embassy in New Delhi; the poster featured Tsai Ing-Wen and Narendra Modi toasting each other with boba and chai. India itself had gotten into border disputes with China, just as Thailand had feuded with China over droughts caused by the Mekong Dam. The slogan attained relevance beyond the three initial groups, and expanded from a national coverage to a regional coverage.
In Asia, China is watched the way the U.S. is watched in the Americas—its every move is interpreted as a signal from a capricious giant. The smaller countries that surround China are painfully aware of its outsized influence, and their alliances form and collapse as counterweights to this influence. The result is a longtime regional awareness orbiting around China, informed by years of intertwined history and immigration from the mainland to the entire East and Southeast Asia region. The phrase “Milk Tea Alliance” has succeeded because instead of creating a new movement from scratch, it gave a name to this awareness.
As a hashtag, “Milk Tea Alliance” acts as a searchable link that illuminates similarities across different movements, allowing users to overcome censorship in their home countries by acting as a group. The solidarity is returned in a feedback loop, until a storm of insults, memes, slogans and hashtags has snowballed into near-identical calls for more transparency, less state-sponsored violence, and democratic reforms. At the end of the day, though, this vehicle for free speech is not guaranteed: there is nothing in the way of these activists’ home countries clamping down on free speech about their neighbors, especially if used to curry favor with the regional giant. Only time will tell whether the tea is served or boils over.
a global affairs media network
How Milk Tea Boiled into a Pan-Asian Alliance
November 24, 2020
I
t began like any internet fight. Vachirawat “Bright” Cheeva-aree, a popular Thai actor of American and Chinese descent, liked a tweet of an image that labeled Hong Kong as a country in April 2020. Chinese netizens dug up his girlfriend’s Instagram profile, and interpreted one of her earlier posts as support for Taiwan’s independence. When they began a round of internet bullying, Bright’s Thai fans rallied to the couple’s defense, and insults soon shifted from the personal to the national. What could have been a pedestrian squabble instead evolved into geopolitical flame war across multiple social media platforms under the hashtag “Milk Tea Alliance”, with the potential to develop into a pan-Asian call for reform. How did this snowball when other hashtags died?
The origin of the term “Milk Tea Alliance” is hard to trace, but easy to explain. In Asia, tea is the social beverage. Thailand has the brightly-colored Cha Nom Yen, Taiwan is famous for boba tea, Hong Kong makes its own with silk stockings, and India’s masala chai is as spicy as it is loved. Malaysia pulls its Teh Tarik in long pours, while Xinjiang, Mongolia and Tibet make buttery versions under the names of Sut Chai, Suutei Tsai, and Cha Süma. Across East Asia and Southeast Asia, each region possesses their unique version of milk tea, and all are connected in some way by history, ethnicity, or geography.
The term has become a shorthand for an online kinship shared across borders by a young, social, and disgruntled audience in Asia. Before the term started trending, members of this audience already had much in common. They shared the same worries about steep economic competition, a cynicism against ruling elites, and memories of life under authoritarian rule. They share the same pop culture “canon” based on popular TV shows translated into different languages, and in a region where multilingualism is the norm, translate memes and news for each other. Having grown up during the social media explosion, each person also tends to own an account on different platforms, and their real-life opinions flow into their online presence. All of these factors have combined to create a powerful in-group identity that transcends national and linguistic borders.
When Chinese users attacked the Thai king in an earlier internet spat, Thais responded with gleeful agreement. They themselves cannot criticize their king due to Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws, laws that have also sparked protests for monarchical reformation and a new constitution. Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates included the term "Milk Tea Alliance" in their support for Thai protests, and Thai protestors responded by flying the Black Bauhinia flag, the flag of Hong Kong on a black background and symbol of its pro-democratic movement. Taiwan itself has a large population of migrant Thai workers, and Taiwan echoed Hong Kong’s commemoration of Tiananmen by staging its own vigil. Activists in the three countries retweet, share, explain, and comment on each other’s posts in English, allowing them to bypass linguistic barriers posed by local slang and opening up the conversation to media beyond the region.
Observers from other countries soon joined in. A spokesperson of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put up a poster celebrating Taiwan’s National Day near China’s embassy in New Delhi; the poster featured Tsai Ing-Wen and Narendra Modi toasting each other with boba and chai. India itself had gotten into border disputes with China, just as Thailand had feuded with China over droughts caused by the Mekong Dam. The slogan attained relevance beyond the three initial groups, and expanded from a national coverage to a regional coverage.
In Asia, China is watched the way the U.S. is watched in the Americas—its every move is interpreted as a signal from a capricious giant. The smaller countries that surround China are painfully aware of its outsized influence, and their alliances form and collapse as counterweights to this influence. The result is a longtime regional awareness orbiting around China, informed by years of intertwined history and immigration from the mainland to the entire East and Southeast Asia region. The phrase “Milk Tea Alliance” has succeeded because instead of creating a new movement from scratch, it gave a name to this awareness.
As a hashtag, “Milk Tea Alliance” acts as a searchable link that illuminates similarities across different movements, allowing users to overcome censorship in their home countries by acting as a group. The solidarity is returned in a feedback loop, until a storm of insults, memes, slogans and hashtags has snowballed into near-identical calls for more transparency, less state-sponsored violence, and democratic reforms. At the end of the day, though, this vehicle for free speech is not guaranteed: there is nothing in the way of these activists’ home countries clamping down on free speech about their neighbors, especially if used to curry favor with the regional giant. Only time will tell whether the tea is served or boils over.
