Having closely observed Taiwanese politics for well over two decades, I do not expect to be surprised by political developments there. Taiwanese politics are certainly never boring. That is why it is such a wonderful topic to research and teach. After a period of relative calm, one of the most noteworthy developments of the past six years has been the resurgence of its social movements. At a time when there is growing alienation from mainstream political parties, civil society is playing a growing and critically important role in Taiwanese democracy. However, the student occupation of the legislature showed how Taiwanese politics retains the ability to surprise.
Seeing pictures of the student occupation and also key figures from the Wild Lily student movement outside the legislature made me think of historical comparisons. The Wild Lily Student movement of 1990 was critically important for a number of reasons. It helped the nation move toward a blueprint for democratization. Equally important, though, was that it represented a huge boost for Taiwan’s international image. Coming less than a year after the Chinese government’s violent crackdown on protests in Tiananmen square, the way in which former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) met Taiwan’s student protesters and engaged with their demands represented a stark contrast. While China chose suppression with tanks, Taiwan chose dialogue and democracy.
One of the major differences between protests in Taiwan and South Korea has been the relative lack of violence in the Taiwanese case. A key reason for this was the ability of the past Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regimes to defuse tensions with dialogue and gradual reforms in response to the demands of civil and political society. The adoption of direct presidential elections represents one such case.
In contrast, in recent years the government has failed to engage with society. This was first apparent in the Wild Strawberry protests of 2008 and 2009. As in 1990, the student protesters kept their distance from the main opposition party. However, the government failed to deal with the students’ core demands over reform of the Parade and Assembly Act (集會遊行法). There was a similar pattern concerning the calls by the movement against media monopolization for media regulation. Once again the government failed to respond to social pressure aimed at protecting media diversity, a central asset of its democracy.
Over the past six years pressure has been building up that could have been released through dialogue. The current crisis was entirely avoidable. Students today are no more radical than those of 1990 and may well be more conservative. It seems unimaginable that students would have adopted such tactics 25 years ago. That student protesters have been willing to go to the extremes of occupying the Legislative Yuan represents a failure of political society to respond to the public.
To the outsider, it may seem hard to comprehend that so much anger has built up due to the government’s refusal to review a services trade agreement. However, the root of the problem has been a gradual building up of tensions and frustration within society.
This is not the first crisis for democracy in Taiwan in recent years. The disputed election of 2004 and the “red shirt” movement of 2006 were also severe crises. Although the nation survived those incidents, it muddled through rather than dealing with the root causes through genuine political reform. The way that Taiwan deals with this current challenge will affect domestic trust in its democratic institutions and also the international reputation of its democracy. The stakes are high.
Dafydd Fell is senior lecturer in Taiwan Studies and deputy director of the SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies in London.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
The Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the largest naval exercise in the region, are aimed at deepening international collaboration and interaction while strengthening tactical capabilities and flexibility in tackling maritime crises. China was invited to participate in RIMPAC in 2014 and 2016, but it was excluded this year. The underlying reason is that Beijing’s ambitions of regional expansion and challenging the international order have raised global concern. The world has made clear its suspicions of China, and its exclusion from RIMPAC this year will bring about a sea change in years to come. The purpose of excluding China is primarily