Taiwan's Social Movements Under Ma Ying-Jeou: From the Wild Strawberries to the Sunflowers by Dafydd Fell

Author:Dafydd Fell [Fell, Dafydd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138675674
Google: 2HsHvgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 31160575
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-01-15T14:14:21+00:00

Waves of previous movements and cross-sectional mobilization networks

Intertwined mobilization

The Sunflower Movement cannot be fully understood without tracing back to a prolonged and gradually escalated process of social movements and social mobilization. Some studies have already identified the relevance of previous social protests and the Sunflower Movement, but their analyses were either incomplete or without the context of the concrete actors (Yuen 2014: 74; Rowen 2015: 9–10). There were at least five to six important waves of social movement in 2012 and 2013, which paved the way for the Sunflower Movement. (1) In July 2012, the ‘Anti-Media Monopoly Movement’ was probably the most conspicuous social reaction to the China factor. (2) In February 2013 the ‘National Alliance of the Laid-off Workers from the Shut-down Factories’ (NALWSF, 全國關廠工人連線) organized a raid to block the railway to register their protest against the government’s neglect of their demands. (3) Environmental groups such as the Green Citizens Action Alliance (GCAA綠色公民行動聯盟) and Citizen of the Earth (CET) then organized a huge anti-nuclear demonstration in March, with more than 150 CSOs and roughly 220,000 people participating. (4) In July and August, a group of netizens unacquainted to each other, taking everyone by surprise, was able to form a group, the Citizen 1985 Action Alliance, and mobilize more than 250,000 citizens to a mass gathering in front of the Presidential Palace protesting against the death of an abused soldier, Hong. (5) Right after the incident, another shocking movement took place in August 2013, the ‘818 Land Justice (and Government Demolishment) Movements’, protesting the Miaoli County government tearing down citizens’ houses in the name of industrial park development in Dapu. On 18 August 2013, the Taiwan Rural Front organized a protest in front of the Ministry of Interior and then occupied the external entrance until the next day. (6) In September, a 929 Citizen Action Alliance (九二九公民行動聯盟), composed of around 20 groups and led by the National Alliance of the Laid-off Workers, assembled to protest against President Ma, who was supposed to show up at the Nineteenth Party Congress of the KMT. The KMT was forced to cancel the congress and delayed it to October. In each of these movements, some CSOs played a central role, while other CSOs were mobilized to provide support.

These waves of movement were initiated by different CSOs and aimed at different public issues. There might be overlapping participants of CSOs in different waves of movement, but there was no overarching coordinator behind the scenes throughout all these waves. Quite on the contrary, many CSOs were either not acquainted with each other as they spent most of the time focusing on their own concerned issue, or they joined a movement initiated by another organization merely as supporters. In the past, CSOs in Taiwan were either divided by their position on the independence versus unification issue, or by politicized versus non-politicized issue. But, in these waves of movements, the CSOs shared one common enemy, that is, the Ma administration. It was their frustration with the Ma

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