Published on: 14 October 2024
| On 2 October 2024, ACLED completed a review of ‘Violent demonstration’ events in its East Asia Pacific dataset to enhance data accuracy. Over 200 events previously coded as ‘Violent demonstration’ have been reclassified as ‘Protest’ events to better reflect the distinction between destructive and non-destructive behavior. The most significant adjustments relate to instances where demonstrators blocked roads without further destructive actions. These data corrections are part of a larger initiative to improve ACLED’s ‘Violent demonstration’ event data. This is the second tranche of data improvements for the East Asia Pacific region. The first tranche focused on Indonesia. |
Key Changes
Correction Period and Scope
The data corrections span all published data to the present.1A full list of ACLED’s country and time period coverage is available here. Out of the 1,465 events reviewed, 227 were reclassified as ‘Protest’ events, which include ‘Peaceful protest’ and ‘Protest with intervention’ sub-event types.
Publication Date
The corrected data were published on 2 October 2024, and all new data will be coded according to the same guidelines.
Reclassification and impact
Following the review, there has been an approximately 15% decrease in the number of ‘Violent demonstration’ events coded across the countries reviewed. Specific breakdowns of the percentage decrease in ‘Violent demonstration’ events per country2Note that this review did not include data for overseas territories in the Pacific region. are listed below:
- Australia: 5%
- Cambodia: 22%
- China: 13%
- Malaysia: about 47%
- Myanmar: about 43%
- New Zealand: 8%
- Papua New Guinea: 52%
- Philippines: 23%
- South Korea: 5%
- Thailand: 7%
- Vietnam: 18%
Of all the corrections made, those pertaining to China accounted for nearly 30%, the largest proportion. Most of these corrections were related to demonstration events in Hong Kong during the 2019-2020 unrest, where many demonstrators erected barricades without resorting to destructive or violent behavior.
Similarly, for the other countries, most corrections involved situations where demonstrators blocked roads or access without being destructive or violent. Some corrections also covered non-violent actions like setting up bonfires, peacefully occupying spaces, or committing minor acts of vandalism, such as spray painting.
For more information, reach out to [email protected].
