News staging - actors

There are many actors in the event, including WTO, Hong Kong government, international protestors and local NGOs, etc. each actors have their own concerns and the representations of the event are results of political and ideologoical contest.

WTO: after the 1999 Seattle anti WTO demonstration, most of the negotiations of the terms in WTO are actually taking place in small committee meetings. The Ministerial conference is a dipolmatic occasion for world leaders to meet each other, form alliance and endorse the earlier agreement. Usually there won't be any dramatic development at the ministerial conference. For example, the death of Doha agreement took place at Geneva, the fourth round of Doha talk, rather than in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong government: they considered themselves as a host, fulfilling her obligation as a member of WTO. To be a good host, she had to make sure that the meeting would not be disrupted; and to justify the expenses in hosting the gathering, it had to persuade Hong Kong people that it is a honor for Hong Kong to host such meeting.

International protestors: their presence was to disrupt the meeting and to tell the negative effect of WTO. The most visible international protestors are Korean farmers whose interest are actually in contradicting to other developing countries. Korean farmers were against the cutting of government subsidy while developing countries' farmers were against the dumping / subsidizing policy of developed countries. However, they managed to form an alliance with a common objective in "crushing the WTO", or "no deal is best deal".

Local NGOs: they are local hosts to the international protestors and they also wanted to grasp the opportunity to present their work to Hong Kong people in order to get their support. The most prominent message given out by local NGOs are from oxfam's position of "fair trade" but not "free trade". While the coordination body of the international protest, Hong Kong people alliance (HKPA) are caught up in logistic arrangement with the government, the trade union agenda in anti-GATS was more or less sidelined.

The WTO and Hong Kong government allied with each other while local and international ngos and protestors formed another alliance in contesting the meaning of WTO.

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