Don’t judge the Sunflower Movement by local election outcomes
November 27, 2014
Written by André Beckershof. A little more than half a year after the Sunflower Movement, the local elections might be seen as a first indicator of the political implications of Taiwan’s largest social movement since the early 1990s. The occupation of the Legislative Yuan was a clear sign to the ruling Kuomintang that the young generation …
Cross-Strait relations after the Sunflower movement
September 26, 2014
Written by Vincent Wei-cheng Wang. It has been six months since the Sunflower Movement (SFM). The student protest movement initially caught the KMT, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the United States by surprise because it appeared a sudden and unexpected reaction against the Cross-Strait Services and Trade Agreement (CSSTA), abruptly halting further progress in …
Sunflower Movement and the future of democracy in Taiwan… and Hong Kong
September 25, 2014
Written by Jean-Pierre Cabestan. Having left Taiwan in 1998 after a five year stay there, I am more distant from every day’s political developments there. I am therefore somewhat hesitant to contribute to this blog. Of course, I have regularly returned to the island, and more often so since I moved back to Hong Kong …
Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and Generation Politics
September 24, 2014
Written by Frank Cheng-shan Liu. The “sunflower” student movement earlier this year aroused island-wide feelings about Taiwan’s political future. For some observers, it is the most important student movement since the late 1980s. However, the movement did not last long. Why didn’t this student-based “movement” turn out to be a society-wide movement as it appeared to …
Taiwan’s Anti-Nuclear Protest Reenergized by Sunflower Movement
September 23, 2014
Written by Ming-sho Ho. On March 9 2014, Taiwan’s annual anti-nuclear demonstrations took place in several major cities. But unlike last year’s event, which witnessed an unprecedented scale of mobilization with 220,000 people taking to the streets, inclement weather in Taipei appeared to have dampened people’s willingness to join the rally. In the end, only …
Where have the Sunflowers gone?
September 22, 2014
Written by J. Michael Cole. The question has been nagging at the edges of my mind ever since it was first thrown at me after I gave a presentation on social movements at a forum organized by SOAS in June: How do we define success in the context of civic activism? Furthermore, how do we …
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