A Decade Later: What is the Lasting Impact of the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements on Political Activism?
This question was at the
forefront of my mind when I proposed to Dr Malte Kaeding and Dr Heidi
Wang-Kaeding that the Taiwan Research Hub join forces with the Hong Kong
Research Hub. Our goal was to organise two joint workshops in Nottingham and
Surrey. We aimed not only to reflect on the events from ten years ago but also
to envision what the next decade and beyond might hold for us. Our joint
workshops took
place on the 18th and 19th of March, coinciding with the anniversary of the
first day of the Sunflower movement’s protests ten years earlier. This post not
only reflects my own thoughts about these two significant social movements in
Taiwan and Hong Kong but also encapsulates my learnings from these two
workshops.
As a graduate student in
journalism in Taiwan, my own take on these two movements is not necessarily
about the content of the movements but the freedom of speech behind the
movements. In the case of Taiwan, before the Sunflower movement, there was an anti-media
monopoly movement that
took place in 2011 and 2012. Tsai Eng-men, a Taiwanese businessperson who had
been investing in China’s food industry since 1990, amassed a considerable
fortune. Upon returning to Taiwan, he purchased a newspaper (China Times), a TV
channel, and a major cable operator. As Prof Liyhun Lin and I discussed in our
paper When
Business Met Politics, acquiring media assets
represents a costly and risky endeavour. Tsai spent about NT $20.4 billion
(around US $680 million) to buy the China Times media group and almost NT $80
billion (around US $2.4 billion) to buy the main cable TV channel CtiTV. Tsai
Eng-men’s investments in media were not intended to generate monetary returns
but to influence public opinion in Taiwan. However, contrary to his
expectations, these efforts had an unintended consequence. The overtly
pro-China stance adopted by his newspaper and TV channels sparked significant
resistance from Taiwan’s civil society. The anti-media monopoly movement was
seen as the seeded movement for the Sunflower movement; quite a few leaders of
the Sunflower movement, for instance, Chen
Wei-Ting, Lin Fei-Fan and Huang
Kuo-Chang all
appeared in the anti-media monopoly movement. In the anti-media movement,
Taiwan’s civil society was defending the freedom of speech, not to be
manipulated by the Chinese purchasing power (through a Taiwanese businessperson
who invested in China). In the Sunflower Movement, although the specific issues
differed from those in the anti-media movement, the overarching goal remained
the same: to resist the influence of Chinese purchasing power being used to
undermine Taiwan’s legislative transparency through backdoor
negotiations.
In the case of Hong Kong,
again, my focus was not exactly on the Umbrella Movement itself but on Apple Daily.
When I was a student of journalism in Taiwan, I had an impression that Apple’s
Daily was a tabloid newspaper. Its news reports mainly were on sensational
social news, murders, raps, and all kinds of news, which triggered readers’
raising eye bows. Our teacher used Apple Daily as an example to indicate how
‘colourful’ a newspaper could be. In the training of ethics of journalism,
Apple Daily was an example of what we should not follow.
Nevertheless, Apple Daily has
transformed dramatically in the past twenty years. It turned out to be the most
vocal newspaper in Hong Kong, criticising China. The arrest of Jimmy Lai (the
newspaper founder) in 2020 was a serious signal. It came along with the Chinese
government’s charge of Apple Daily of ‘breaching
National Security Law’. The last print of Apple
Daily was June 24
2021. That was a historical date to mark, which symbolised the
freedom of speech, along with the democracy of Hong Kong fell into the iron
fist of the Chinese government. From this juncture, what can one expect of the
future of Hong Kong?
The future is not entirely
bleak. In fact, during our workshop discussion, it became clear that the
responsibility of maintaining a democratic Hong Kong may rest with the Hong
Kong diaspora. It involves not just preserving memories of what Hong Kong once
was but also educating the next generation about the principles of democracy.
Since 2019, Cantonese communities have been relocating not just to the UK but
also to Canada, Taiwan, the US, and other parts of the world. Our workshop
discussion highlighted that these global Cantonese communities could embrace
the mission of building a free Hong Kong from abroad outside of the physical
borders of Hong Kong itself.
Ten years after the Sunflower
Movement, Taiwan presents a distinct case. The quick answer to the kind of
society Taiwan has become is that a clearer and more confident Taiwanese
identity has emerged over this decade. It is easier for one to take the result
of the Presidential election as an indicator that the Taiwanese people chose not to appoint
the pro-China KMT to lead Taiwan. However, apart from the Presidential
election, there are also other changes in Taiwan which allow us to see the
lineage of the Sunflower movement. The questionable CtiTV eventually was revoked
the broadcasting license in November 2020. I
argued in my second paper, Does Press
Freedom Come with Responsibility? Media for and against Populism in Taiwan,
along with Prof Lin, that the National Communication Council (NCC)’s decision
to revoke the CtiTV’s broadcasting license was not because this TV channel
supported the mainland China-friendly and populist figure Han Kuo Yu but because the high percentage of false news reports.
Nevertheless, such a decision
at the time triggered Han’s supporters’ complaints about the Taiwanese
government’s intervention in the media’s freedom of speech. Those critics’ point was that Taiwan is a democratic society;
therefore the government should allow different opinions in the broadcasting,
even if that voice was to support the threat of democratic Taiwan. My two
penn’orth on this matter is that the name and value of democracy, along with
the freedom it embodies, cannot be hijacked by false news reports, which was
precisely why CtiTV’s broadcasting license was not renewed. This incident
highlights that Taiwan is still actively working to strengthen its democratic
processes, emphasising how precious it is that Taiwan continues in this effort.
To revisit my initial
inquiry: Ten years on, do the Sunflower and Umbrella movements still hold
significance? Absolutely, they do. Although younger generations may not have
directly experienced these movements, their importance persists because the
struggle continues. The threat of authoritarianism remains, subtly infiltrating
democratic societies in various forms. These movements are crucial because they
symbolise our ongoing resistance against such authoritarian powers, not just in
Taiwan and Hong Kong, but for their broader democratic ideals.
Dr Chun-yi Lee is an Associate
Professor at the University of Nottingham School of Politics and International
Relations. She is the Director of the Taiwan Research Hub at the University of
Nottingham and the Editor-in-Chief of Taiwan Insight.