Where have Taiwan’s student activists gone in protests against opposition lawmakers?

When people celebrated the tenth anniversary of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement in mid-March this year with rallies, workshops and film screenings, these occasions served as a reunion for many former participants. They were cautiously optimistic that the movement’s main demand — that Taiwan should not sacrifice its hard-won democratic autonomy for economic ties with mainland China — remained an enduring legacy.

Unexpectedly, two months later, right after the inauguration of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) President Lai Ching-te on 20 May, protests erupted against the opposition-led legislature. On 21 May, a protest began in the morning and lasted until midnight. Braving heavy rain, 30,000 participants showed up. The protest on 24 May attracted 100,000 people at its peak. That Friday evening, many roads near the Legislative Yuan were blocked and filled with angry but peaceful protesters, replicating the spectacle of the Sunflower Movement.

The issue centres on a controversial expansion of legislative powers. Under the guise of “legislative reforms”, the Kuomintang (KMT) (52 seats) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) (8 seats) are using their majority to push through new measures despite the objections of the ruling DPP (51 seats).

The opposition parties are demanding that the president deliver an annual report to the legislature and immediately respond to lawmakers’ inquiries, a move that would infringe upon the role of the premier, the constitutionally designated executive chief. Additionally, they seek to grant the legislature new investigative powers, enabling it to summon officials, military units, enterprises, and individuals for questioning. Non-compliance with these demands would be considered a crime of “contempt of legislature” punishable by up to one year in prison.

This power grab has alarmed the European Chamber of Commerce, which has expressed its concerns. The Taiwan Bar Association has also condemned the move, calling it a violation of the “constitutional order”.

Ten years ago, it was due to KMT lawmakers’ railroading of a comprehensive free trade agreement with China that triggered students’ occupation of the legislature for over three weeks. At that time, the KMT forcibly ended committee deliberations by declaring the review process complete.

This time, the opposition parties have made more assertive use of their seat majority. The exact wording of the proposed amendments was not announced before the vote, and DPP lawmakers were only given three minutes to speak per article.

For such a significant expansion of legislative powers, the opposition parties deliberately avoided the conventional method of a recorded vote, ensuring that the public would not know how each lawmaker voted.

China looms large behind this legislative self-aggrandisement. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) recently announced a large-scale military exercise at multiple sites around Taiwan, mirroring its sabre-rattling after then US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022.

Han Kuo-yu, the current president of the Legislative Yuan, has deviated from the traditional role of neutrality by allowing the opposition’s abrasive use of their majority. Han, the KMT’s presidential nominee in 2020, was soundly defeated by the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen, partly due to his perceived close ties with the PRC. During a visit to Hong Kong in 2019 when he was Kaohsiung mayor, Han entered the Central Liaison Office, a gesture seen as symbolic acceptance of “one country, two systems”.

Additionally, Fu Kun-Chi, the leader of the KMT caucus, recently returned from a trip to China, during which he had met with the PRC’s top official on Taiwan policy. This has led many to suspect that Fu’s push for an expanded legislature is driven by directives from Beijing, which has many reasons to destabilise Taiwan’s democracy.

As it has been argued, two main driving forces behind the support for Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement were concerns over endangered democracy and the need to assert a Taiwanese identity in the face of China’s annexation attempts. The recent collaboration between the KMT and the TPP is widely seen as detrimental to Taiwan’s democracy, violating procedural justice, and likely orchestrated by China.

This combination of threats has prompted a strong reaction from Taiwan’s citizens and civil society. The recent wave of protests began with a late evening gathering of 3,000 people on 17 May and quickly evolved into large-scale rallies the following week. Thus, it was not surprising to see demonstrators carrying flowers and even singing or performing the song Island’s Sunrise — the widely accepted movement anthem of 2014.

The recent protest is led by the Taiwan Economic Democracy Union (TEDU), a coalition of human rights, environmental, labour and women’s NGOs, which had already been campaigning against further economic integration with China before the Sunflower Movement erupted.

In response to the legislative brawls on 17 May, TEDU promptly called for action on 21 May and 24 May, with a successful turnout. However, a key element of the previous movement seems to be missing: the students, who were the recognised figureheads of the Sunflower Movement.

This is not to say students are entirely absent from the scene. In fact, casual observers would easily notice high school students in uniforms, some of whom were courageous enough to speak on spontaneous soapboxes. Several National Taiwan University student associations also launched a signature campaign and organised a speaker’s corner on a truck on the evening of 24 May.

Nevertheless, the Sunflower Movement was indebted to a series of student protests that began in 2008. During this rising wave of youth activism, students established a nationwide network, gained visibility and formed their leadership core. In contrast, current student activists would have to start from a more rudimentary position.

The last major incidents of student involvement, such as the rally for same-sex marriage and the solidarity campaigns for Hong Kong, both in 2019, occurred quite some time ago. It remains to be seen whether the legislative power grab will trigger a new wave of student activism.

Lastly, the Sunflower Movement challenged the then-ruling party, which controlled both the executive and legislative branches, while the May protests specifically targeted the opposition parties.

In 2014, the KMT suffered a major setback due to its clumsy and divided response to the political crisis of the legislature’s occupation. Ten years later, protesters are unlikely to adopt this radical tactic of disobedience and still win public support. But will the same voter backlash against the KMT and the TPP occur in the wake of these events? That remains to be seen.

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