The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia’s Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Columbia Global Reports: 2025
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When Twitter was still Twitter, I checked it multiple times a day to get a sense of what activists, journalists, academics, and policy wonks across the world were discussing. I remember the early expressions of solidarity between Thais and Hongkongers on the platform, all of them fed-up with the overbearing tactics of the ultra-patriotic Chinese cyber army. There was a sense of outrage over the encroachment of Chinese authoritarianism into their politics and online spaces. Over time, a name for this loose network—eventually including not just Thailand and Hong Kong, but also Taiwan, Myanmar, and India, among others—emerged: the Milk Tea Alliance, a reference to how many of the represented countries have their own versions of the (often decadently sweet) beverage.

In The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia’s Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing, Jeffrey Wasserstrom examines this transnational solidarity through the experiences of Agnes Chow from Hong Kong, Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal from Thailand, and, to a lesser extent, Nickey Diamond of Myanmar. All three have been active in pro-democracy or human rights advocacy from a young age—and all experienced reprisals in some shape and form. While Netiwit is still based in his home country (where he’s facing charges of evading military conscription as a conscientious objector), Chow graduated with a Master’s degree in Toronto in July 2025, and Diamond lives in exile in Germany.

• Tags: China, Indonesia, Issue 42, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Kirsten Han, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand