Black Island: Two Years of Activism in Taiwan

412 Pages·25.626 MB·English

by  J. Michael Cole

"Taiwan's Youth Fights for Democracy, Again" reprinted frOIn The Wall
Street Journal Asia © 2014 Dow Jones & Company, Ine. AlI rights reserved.
"The Return of Gangster Politics in Taiwan," "Taiwanese Occupy
Legislature Over China Pact," "Riot Police Crack Down on Taiwanese
Protesters," "Hundreds of Thousands Protest Against Trade Pact in
Taiwan," "Say Goodbye to 'Peaceful Unification,fI' "Sunflowers End
Occupation of Taiwan's Legislature," "Taiwan Rocked by Anti-Nuclear
Protests," "Taiwan Executes 5 Death Row Inmates as Politieal Cris is
Deepens," "Wake Up, Washington: AIl's Not WeIl in Taiwan" and "Was
Taiwan' s Sunflower Movement Suecessful?" reprinted with permission of
The Diplomat.
"A Rude Awakening for Taiwan's Presidential Office," Attack of the
1/
Dinosaurs," "Smear Taetics and Taiwan's Compliant Media," "324: Police
Brutality or Commensurate Response?" "Debunking the Myths About
Taiwan' s Sunflower Movement," "In Defense of the Sunflower
Movement," "Taipei flirts with 'authoritarianism lite' amid politieal crisis/'
"Where have the Sunflowers gone?" and "Crass electoral politics and the
role of a militant civil society" reprodueed with pernlÏssion of the China
Poliey Institute Blog, University of Nottingham.
"Ma Ying-jeou's point of no return" reproduced with permission of Taiwan
News.
AlI other articles are from Thinking Taiwan and The Far-Eastern 5weet Potato.
For Ketty, 1uho n1ade the journey with me, and to Ms. Peng Hsiu
chun, who Iost a hon1e and a husband, and yet stands shoulders
abo7.Je all the officiaIs who orchestrated that assault on her dignihj.

Table of contents
Chapter 1: The Long Raad ta 318 ... 19
Chapter 2: Article 972 and the Rise of Christian Evangelicals
- Yes, in Taiwan ... 189
Chapter 3: Gante Changer: The Sunflawers Take Action ... 247

Foreword
Il marchait sous le fouet du maître. Le voilà qui fait face.
- Albert Camus, L'homme révolté
It is fascinating to read George Orwell writing in early 1940,
just as England was beginning to realize that war with Nazi
Germany was becoming a real possibility. Reviewing the book
The Thirties by Malcolm Muggeridge, Orwell is filled with
uncertainty about whether Englishmen have it within them to
stand up to Germany and defend their nation. Orwell is
agnostic, no doubt, but he doesn' t share Muggeridge' s
extreme pessimism. "What Mr. Muggeridge appears to be
saying is that the English are powerless against their new
adversaries because there is no longer anything that they
believe in with suffieient firmness to make them willing for
sacrifiee." *
Muggeridge could well have beenwriting about Taiwan
in the not-too-distant past,which like Britain before it faced an
existential threat at a time when its people appeared to have
been sapped of all will to resist or to sacrifiee.
But bleak as England's situation seemed to be at the time,
Orwell had doubts about the inevitability of capitulation. "1
don' t myself believe that he is right," Orwell says of
Muggeridge. "But one cannot be sure until something of quite
unmistakable nature - some great disaster, probably - has
brought home to the mass of the people what kind of world
they are living in."
The will to fight, a characteristic w hieh crities of the
current generation of young Taiwanese have often argued is
lacking, cannot be taken for granted. But as Orwell observes
(and history proves he was ri ght) , the ostensibly apathetic
Orwell, George, Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), pp. 269-72.
8 / J MICHAEL COLE
citizen will generally do what is necessary when he "finds in
the moment of crisis that he is a patriot after aIl."
The similarities between Taiwan and pre-World War Two
England run deeper. In his famous es say "The Lion and the
Unicorn" published the following year, Orwell observes that
despite years of clear signaIs that danger was approaching,
England was unprepared to face up to Nazi Germany. "What
had happened was that the whole monied cl as s, unwilling to
face a change in their way of life, had shut their eyes to the
nature of Fascism and modern war. And false optimism was
fed to the general public by the gutter press."*
Similar to the monied class in Taiwan today, whose
continued enrichment is increasingly contingent on steady
rapprochement with China, the ruling class in England was
figl).ting for its own privileges, which Orwell added, "cannot
possibly be reconciled with the public interest."
Through the following essays, published over a period of
about 18 months between late 2012 through the fall of 2014, 1
set out to demonstrate that, sensing that the moment of crisis
was upon them, Taiwanese discovered that they were, to
paraphrase Orwell, patriotic after aIl. However, the patriotism
that gradually established its tone during that heady period
was a new brand of "civic nationalism," a departure from the
old notions of "the nation"which had hitherto been based
primarily on ethnicity. For the activists, a willingness to fight
for shared values, a way of life, and the country' s democratic
system, however flawed it has become, was the main criterion
for "membership." Thus, voting preference (at least among
those of voting age), the political" color" of one' s family, one' s
"ethnicity," were aIl secondary factors, if not altogether
irrelevant. The heterogeneous nature of the social movements,
many of which came together during the Sunflowers'
occupation of the legislature in March and April 2014 (see
Chapter 3), therefore caused great alarm with the authorities,
Ibid, pp. 291-348.
BLACK ISLAND /9
which countered in increasingly undemocratic fashion with
measures that, in turn, only served to exacerbate the tensions
between the government and civil society.
In some ways this volume serves as a companion ta my
autobiographical work Officially Un officia l: Confessions of a
Journalist in Taiwan, published in 2014, throughout which the
rise of social forces is a recurring theme. 1t is divided into
three sections. Chapter l, "The Long Road to 318," opens with
the 2012 protests surrounding the attempted acquisition of
Next Media' s Taiwan operations by a pro-Beijing Taiwanese
billionaire. The "media monster" that would have been
created had the acquisition proceeded already foreshadowed
many of the elements that led to the rise of the Sunflower
Movement in March 2014: China, big business, censorship,
improper oversight, dysfunctional government agencies, and
a widening gap between the authorities and society.
Although the case could be made that the Wild
Strawberries Movement that emerged during Association for
Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) chairman Chen
Yunlin's groundbreaking visit to Taiwan in late 2008
represented the rebirth of pugnacious civic activism in
Taiwan, 1 argue here that the real rebirth, or at least the most
consequential one, began in 2012. The "long road" symbolizes
the emergence of charismatic leaders, the refinement of
techniques, the snowballing effect, and above aIl the cross
pollination and coming together of various sectors of civil
society to include students, NGOs, university professors,
artists, and ordinary citizens in response to government
intransigence. The events described in this chapter are
presented in chronological order to give the reader a sense of
the graduaI escalation that occurred during that period, when
the two camps hardened their positions. Besides the Media
Monster case, other controversies that are explored in this
section include government-sanctioned expropriations, abuse
in the military, theft of Aboriginalland, police violence, and
restrictions on press freedoms. It also provides features about
victims, activists, and a prominent pro-unification gangster
10 1 J MICHAEL COLE
who, following his return to Taiwan after 16 years in exile,
injected himself into politics and in doing so made the
underworld a new factor in the struggle between civil society,
the government, and China.
Chapter 2, titled "Article 972 and the Rise of Christian
Evangelicals - Yes, in Taiwan," looks at an entirely different
phenomenon and explores the behind-the-scenes role played
by fundamentalist Christians in countering efforts by
legislators and civil society to legalize same-sex unions in
Taiwan. Although most of the protagonists (and antagonists)
who figure in that section were not involved in the issues
discussed in Chapters 1 and 3, this subject is nonetheless
highl y relevant, as same-sex marriage is an issue that is not
being debated along the traditional green" versus "blue"
/1
divide within society and at the legislature.* This chapter also
shows how small but wealthy and politically connected lobby
organizations - in this instance Christians with ties to the
ultraconservative "Bible Belt" in the D.S. - can hijack policies
that are otherwise relatively uncontroversial within
Taiwanese society.
Finally, Chapter 3, "Game Changer: The Sunflowers Take
Action," opens on March 17, 2014, when the pressures that
accumulated over the previous 18 months finally spilled over
the rim. Those who had been monitoring social activism in the
previous year regarded the explosion that occurred the
following day, with the occupation of the legislative
chambers, as almost inevitable. In fact, hints of that
"inevitability" are seen throughout Chapter 1. The three-week
stando ff, which also led to the brief occupation of the
Executive Yuan and a nearly half-a-million-people rally in
Generally speaking, the "green" camp regroups the Democratie Progressive Party
(DPP) and other, smaller parties that favor Taiwanese independence. For its part,
the "blue" camp is led by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which currently rules
Taiwan. Along with smaller parties, the blue camp tends to be more pro-China,
although there is disagreement within it regarding the extent to which Taiwan
should cooperate with Beijing. There is no real political left or right in Taiwanese
party politics.
BLACK ISLAND /11
Taipei on March 30, likely has had a transformative impact on
the future of politics in Taiwan, if not upon Taipei' s relations
with Beijing. It certainly has inspired hope among Taiwanese
overseas who had given up on Taiwan' s ability to remain free
and democratic in the faee of Chinese pressure.* Chapter 3
concludes with observations on the government's reaction to
the unprecedented events, and attempts to generate
discussion on what the implications might be for the future of
Taiwan.
At this point, it is impossible to tell the extent to which the
Sunflower Movement and its allied organizations have
transformed the face of politics on the island. There are good
reasons to believe that a reinvigorated, perhaps more risk
prone, civil society has come of age and, more importantly,
that it is here to stay. Some activists have since entered politics
or joined political parties, an important step in bridging pure
oppositional activism and poliey implementation. The rise of
civil society also arguably had an impact on the "nine-in-one"
municipal eleetions held nationwide on November 29, 2014, in
which President Ma' s KMT suffered a major setback in part as
a result of the poor governance of its officiaIs and the issues
made public by activists during the previous two years. There
are also undeniable signs that developments in Taiwan have
inspired similar movements in Hong Kong and Macau, and
perhaps even encouraged cooperation between activists from
both sides. Sueh a phenomenon would raise the stakes and
enlarge the battlefield, with implications that go weIl beyond
domestic politics in Taiwan.
Sometime in late 2013, following my resignation from the
Ta ipe i Tintes after a seven-and-a-half-year stint with the
newspaper, 1 was informed that some of my regular readers in
the D.S. were wondering why, after years of writing almost
It may also have had an impact on the oftentimes lonely field of Taiwan studies
abroad. In the months following the events at the legislature, several academic
conferences on Taiwan's social movements were organized in Europe and North
America. was invited to speak at several, and the interest was palpable.
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