6. Chapter 6: The Sunflower Movement
6.6 Sunflower Movement as a destabilising historical event?
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was a consequence of the legacy of the older generations. Some called the students the Bomb Generations (bengshidai, 崩世代). The Sunflower Movement also demanded
"inter generational justice" as well as more spaces to participate in politics. As one NTU student said "generational justice means disproportionate justice because for example housing prices and salaries are all set by the older generation for us. Generational justice means we want equal salaries, it means we want to have equality, if we want to live in Taipei, maybe our salary needs to be 50000 not 22000. Why do we have this? because the older generation deserved two decades before"138.
6.6 Sunflower Movement as a destabilising historical event?
When studying political generations using Mannheim's approach, is important to detect the historical events that shape them. Following that logic, Andy Chang and T.Y Wang proposed a model for identifying political generations in Taiwan, based on several events in the modern Taiwanese history, commonly viewed as significant to the island's economic, political and social development139. Therefore, one of the questions that arises when analysing the Sunflower Movement is whether or not it can be considered a catalyst for the emergence of a new political generation.
The Sunflower Movement had several characteristics that identity it as a destabilising historical event in correlation with Mannheim's model. See Model Appendix.
Most of the people involved in the movement were young and fall into the formative years age bracket. From March 25th- 29th, during the Sunflower Movement, the department of sociology of the University of Taipei conducted 554 surveys on participants in the movement, 56% of these were students and 44.5% of these students were between 20-24 years old.140. According to Mannheim's theory, when individuals
138 Interview 17. See appendix.
139 Andy Chang and T.Y Wang, "Taiwanese or Chinese? Independence or Unification? An analysis of Generational differences in Taiwan" Journal of Asian and African studies 40 (2005):31.
140Chenwanqi, "shuilai xueyun? taiyanghuaxueyun canyuzhedejibenrenkoutuxiang" PTS News Network July 14, 2014,
http://pnn.pts.org.tw/main/2014/07/14/%E8%AA%B0%E4%BE%86%E3%80%8C%E5%AD%
B8%E9%81%8B%E3%80%8D%EF%BC%9F%E5%A4%AA%E9%99%BD%E8%8A%B1%E 5%AD%B8%E9%81%8B%E5%8F%83%E8%88%87%E8%80%85%E7%9A%84%E5%9F%B A%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA%E5%8F%A3%E5%9C%96%E8%B1%A1/
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between 18-25 years old pass through a historical event, this has the potential to shape their political views and attitudes. When looking at the age of the participants, the data provided reinforces the idea that most of the participants were in their formative years.
Furthermore, for the younger generation, the Sunflower Movement was a turning point for the political development of Taiwan. The social movement was able to gather a great deal of people to protest against Ma's administration, police estimated the crowd at 120,000, while the students put the figure at closer to 500,000. The wide roads around the Presidential building in central Taipei were jammed with people for blocks in all directions.141 This created a sense of community and a group that shaped the memories of the participants as well as a new way to understand politics for those involved.
The Sunflower Movement changed the political values of the people and in particular the young.
As you can see in Table XII, the perceived identity of respondents aged 20-29 increases in Taiwanese identity to 71.4%. This, although only a slight change of 5.7%, it is still noteworthy purely on the basis that the percentage is so high. One explanation can be seen in that the rise of the Sunflower Movement initiated in 2008 and many participants may already in 2008 have perceived themselves as Taiwanese.
Table XII: Self-identity before and after the Sunflower Movement
Age Taiwanese Both Chinese
Taiwanese
Chinese
Before Sunflower Movement
20-29 65.7% 32.8% 1.4%
After Sunflower Movement
20-20 71.4% 26.8 0.8%
Source: TEDS 2013, TEDS 2014
141 Mark Harrison. "The Sunflower Movement in Taiwan" The China Story, April 18, 2014.
http://www.thechinastory.org/2014/04/the-sunflower-movement-in-taiwan
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Regarding independence vs unification, before the Sunflower Movement, there were two main trends. Firstly, the young who later become into the Sunflower's political generation "maintaining the status quo and decide either unification or independence later". Secondly, 25.5% favoured the independence of Taiwan. On the other hand, after the Sunflower Movement, 46% favoured the independence of Taiwan, another interesting aspect that supports the idea that the Sunflower's political generation are neither pragmatic or agnostic is the fact that only 13% favour the option of "maintaining the status quo, decide unification or independence" See table XIII.
Table XIII: Unification vs Independence before and after Sunflower Movement Before Sunflower After Sunflower 20-29 years old 20-29 years old
Immediate unification 2.4% 2.5%
Immediate Independence 6% 15%
Maintain status quo, move towards unification in the future
4.8% 10.9%
Maintain the status quo and move towards independence
19.5% 31%
Maintain the status quo, decide either unification or independence
42% 13%
Maintain status forever 21.9% 24%
Source: TEDS 2013, TEDS 2014
Regarding levels of political interest displayed by the young following the Sunflower Movement the number of people not very interested in politics decreased by 10% whilst the number of very interested in politics increased by the same amount. This is again very suggestive of the destabilising impact of the movement on the young generation.
See table XIV.
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Table XIV: Interest in politics before and after the Sunflower Movement
Sunflower Movement Before After
Age 20-29 20-29
Not interested at all 4.8% 4.2%
Not very interested 41.4% 31.9%
Interested 45% 45%
Very interested 8.5% 18.4%
Source: TEDS 2013, TEDS 2014
Secondly, the Sunflower Movement arguably succeeded in destabilising domestic politics. For example, during 9-1 elections of November 29th, 2014, the same general unrest towards the Ma's administration that was displayed during the student protests, was also the reflected in the local elections. In the elections for special municipality mayors, county magistrates, and city mayors, the KMT was able to hold onto only six out of 22 seats, compared to 15 it won previously, while the opposition DPP captured 13 (not including an independent who was endorsed by the DPP and won the race in Taipei Municipality), a net gain of seven. One major factor contributing to the dismal outcome for the KMT is the performance of the Ma administration. There had been a series of policy fiascos during Ma’s term, including several major incidents right before the elections (e.g., the reform to institute 12-year compulsory education, and the cooking oil scandals), which alienated even traditional KMT supporters. The grievances of the young were particularly conspicuous.142
Thirdly, the student movement reactivated and consequently destabilised Taiwanese civil society. As one NCCU student said "the Sunflower Movement changed the opinion of civil society and the major of Taipei who is an independent politician. These kind of things wouldn't had happened without the Sunflower movement because young generation were told not to be political engaged because their parents used to tell us that politics is dark and chaos".
142 John Fuh-sheng Hsieh. "Taiwan in 2014: A besieged President amid political turnmoil" Asian Survey 44, no. 11 ( 2015): 146.
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There is no doubt that the Sunflower Movement has reanimated civil society in Taiwan, which had grown dangerously pessimistic and disorganised over the years. 54 civic organisations and NGOs took part in the occupation. Besides bringing civil society together, the Sunflowers also gave renewed hope to people who had given up on Taiwan.143 In addition, the Sunflower movement was able to galvanise public sympathy because it struck a chord with what already exists within modern Taiwanese society — a deep dissatisfaction with polarised party politics, an ineffective representative democracy and widening social inequality. The success of the Sunflower movement resides in its ability to connect the political with the social; it acknowledges that Taiwan is in need of further democratisation in order to re-establish a more responsive (instead of reactive) political system conducive to greater societal transformation and progression144. As the DPP chairman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) stated, The Sunflower movement was the first time that a social movement with such a scale of mass participation was able to generate so much energy without serious physical confrontations and violence — except for the government’s bloody crackdown against the protesters at the Executive Yuan. It changed everything.145
Fourthly, regarding Cross-Strait relations, the Sunflower Movement was able to inject itself into politics across the Taiwan Strait, thus forcing Beijing to take social forces into consideration as it adjusts its policies. Above all, the Sunflower Movement was able to communicate, almost viscerally, the widespread opposition within Taiwan to Beijing’s stillborn “one country, two systems” formula, opposition that, while it existed in the past, had never truly succeeded in finding its voice. The message was loud and clear, and Beijing heard it146. In addition, the Sunflower Movement also served as a counterbalance to the Ma's administration policies regarding Mainland, now conditioned to the adoption of "monitoring regulations" to enable better public and legislative scrutiny of Cross-Strait Relations. The Ma administration has already
143 J. Michael Cole. "Was Taiwan's Sunflower Movement successful?" The Diplomat, July 1, 2014 http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/was-taiwans-sunflower-movement-successful/
144 Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh, "Tiannamen, Sunflowers and the framing of democratisation in China and Taiwan", China Policy Institute Blog, June 1, 2014,
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conceded to civic organisations that deals negotiated with Beijing could be revised by the Legislative Yuan and sent back for recognition if not ratified147.
Therefore, It can be argued that the Sunflower Movement, indeed, was a destabilising historical event for Taiwan, not only because it created shared memories between young generation but also because it gave a sense of hope and changed the way how young relate to politics. It was a formative event as well as an accumulative inter-generational struggle that served as the catalyst for a political generation, the Sunflower's generation.
147 Mathieu Duchatel. "The impact of the Sunflower Movement on Cross-Strait Relations". ( Paper presented at 11th Annual Conference on "The Taiwan issue in China- Europe relations.
Shanghai, September 14 -16 2014)
http://www.swp-berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/projekt_papiere/Taiwan2ndTrack_Mathieu_Duchatel_20 14_web.pdf
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7. Chapter 7 - Sunflower political generation's Political values and attitudes