By Joseph Tse-Hei Lee 李榭熙
In Hong Kong in 2019, “cockroach” was an insult directed at people protesting a proposed extradition bill. In India this year, controversial “cockroach” remarks by the country’s chief justice provoked a backlash among young people and inspired the satirical Cockroach Janta Party.
Young activists turned a term of derision into an icon of political defiance.
When young citizens doubt that education, hard work and institutions can deliver a meaningful future, even an insult can become a language of political solidarity for Gen Z.
India and Hong Kong are profoundly different, despite their shared British colonial history. India is the world’s largest democracy. Hong Kong’s 2019 uprising unfolded amid an escalating struggle over Beijing’s authority under the framework of “one country, two systems.”
Yet both situations raise an important question for Taiwan as it approaches its local elections on Nov. 28: What convinces young citizens that democratic institutions still respond to them?
For Hong Kongers, “cockroach” carries a painful memory. During the 2019 anti-extradition movement, the term was used to dehumanize protesters. A citizen has rights and legitimate grievances. A cockroach is a pest to be removed. Once authorities reduce people with grievances to problems to be eliminated, coercion becomes easier to justify in the name of restoring order.
India’s activists turned that logic on its head, recasting an insult meant to diminish them into a source of collective empowerment. A generation raised on memes and social media understands something important about power: Politics involves not only control over institutions and streets, but also contests over words, images and identities.
Taiwan’s democratic transition has shown that civic engagement occurs beyond the voting booth. Its vibrant civil society has made public space and youth participation integral to democratic life. The challenge for democracy is not simply telling citizens to vote, but giving them reason to believe that participation matters.
One striking characteristic of Hong Kong’s 2019 uprising was the prominence of educated young people. They formed human chains, organized strikes, circulated information, created visual symbols and mobilized through decentralized networks. Their frustration was never reducible to economic discontent. Although Hong Kong’s political crisis concerned the erosion of freedom and autonomy, it exposed a generation increasingly uncertain about its future.
For generations, education has sustained a promise of social mobility across Asia: Study hard, earn the right credentials, compete successfully and advancement should follow.
What happens when that bargain falters?
Artificial intelligence is disrupting expectations about employment just as younger generations confront intense competition for professional work.
An unemployed or underemployed graduate does not automatically become an activist. However, something changes when enough educated people view their predicament as structural. Private disappointments can evolve into collective grievances.
The underlying crisis is one of trust. If education no longer provides a reasonable expectation of advancement while established institutions seem unable to respond, young people might question the credibility of the system itself.
Hong Kong’s protesters famously embraced the principle of “be water,” using digital networks to exchange information, coordinate action and challenge official narratives. Young Indians inhabit the same technological world, in which political participation need not begin with joining a party or reading a manifesto. Sometimes, it begins with a joke.
The cockroach metaphor deserves to be taken seriously. Satire can accomplish something that conventional political rhetoric often cannot: It gives strangers an instantly recognizable language of shared experience.
Social media does not manufacture political discontent. It connects people who previously imagined they were suffering alone. They discover others expressing the same anxieties. A joke becomes a meme. A meme turns into an identity. And an identity can travel from smartphones to public squares.
These forms of mobilization challenge established institutions. Horizontal movements might look leaderless and disorganized to officials accustomed to negotiating with recognized representatives, but decentralization can also make them resilient.
The crucial question is why their message resonates.
India is not Hong Kong and a simple analogy would obscure more than it reveals. After 2020, Beijing’s national security measures sharply narrowed the space for political dissent in Hong Kong. Enforcing compliance is not the same as earning trust.
India has its own tradition of Gandhian nonviolent resistance. Taiwan followed its own path from authoritarian rule to democracy. Their histories differ, but they face a common challenge: Do young citizens still believe their voices matter?
As Taiwan enters another electoral season, the answer matters more than which party wins which municipality.
From Beijing’s Tiananmen protests in 1989 to Hong Kong in 2019 and India today, young people living under very different political systems have turned private frustrations into public demands. Their political language has evolved: Hierarchies give way to networks, manifestos compete with memes and satire travels farther than formal speeches. Even an insult can be reclaimed as an identity.
To embrace a name meant to demean you is to deprive it of some of its power. Humiliation becomes humor; humor creates recognition; recognition builds solidarity.
Taiwan need not repeat another society’s history to learn from it. As Taiwanese prepare for another election day, the lesson from India and Hong Kong is not to fear politically assertive youth, but to ask what gives them reason to invest in the society they will inherit. A democracy’s strength lies not only in the freedom to speak and vote, but in the conviction that speaking and voting can make a difference. Perhaps that is the lesson India’s Gen Z “cockroaches,” and Hong Kong before them, offer Taiwan.
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee is a professor of history at Pace University in New York.