 Okay, let's get started. So welcome to the SOAS annual summer school. This is a two and a half day event and every year we look at a number of different themes to examine Taiwan. We also have some research training sessions. Now this year, the kind of key themes we're doing are social movements. In fact, we've just finished two and a half days of a conference on Taiwanese social movements. And that was how I was able to put together such an amazing panel for this session. I'll talk a little bit about the composition of the panel in a minute. The other themes that we're covering over this next two and a half days include education in Taiwan, history and geography education, history of Taiwan. On Friday we'll look at the politics of identity and we'll look at gender politics in Taiwan. But today our focus is on the sunflower movement. And it's a really interesting topic and we've been talking about this last two and a half days, we've been talking about social movements since 2008. Basically every paper has somehow kind of ended up discussing the sunflower movement and the way that pressure's built up over the last two presidential terms to actually culminate in what we've seen in the spring of this year. When the movement was erupting back in March and April, I had a number of requests to organise a panel on the sunflower movement. But I felt it was a little bit too early. I felt we really needed to have eyewitnesses and people who could also look at this issue from a more kind of historical comparative angle. And let me just say a bit about what a wonderful panel we've got to look forward to this afternoon. Our first speaker is Katie Chen. Katie's been following social movements in Taiwan over the last four or five years. One way you can get at Katie's work is through her blog, Participant Observer, which looks at a range of social issues. Our next speaker is Chloe Mingxiu from National Taiwan University. Mingxiu is going to be talking about the social basis of understanding this movement. Mingxiu is one of the leading figures in the English language literature on Taiwanese social movements. He's one of these people that in our classes on Taiwanese social movements you can't really not read his work. Again, I'm really delighted that he's joined us. Our third speaker is going to be Michael Cole. Michael is a former editor from the Taipei Times. He's a non-resident scholar at Nottingham's China Centre. And he's also the editor of a quite remarkable new English language platform on understanding modern Taiwan, called Thinking Taiwan, which was wonderful resource for us in English looking at Taiwan. Our fourth speaker is someone who probably had a huge influence on me getting involved in the study of Taiwan. I think if there's one person that, this is Fan Yun. I remember when I first went to a Taiwan Studies conference back in 1998 Fan Yun was on the conference. So that was when you were still a PhD student I think. And I think one of the great things both about Fan Yun and some of the other speakers is they were actually involved in the Wild Liddy's movement back in 1990. So are they able to give us a kind of historical comparative perspective on what we're seeing since 2008. And then after Fan Yun then we have a group presentation. We have Zhen Xiaota, who's a former SOAS student. We have Zhang Wanzi, a former Essex PhD student. And we have Luona Kong. And their collective title is the Collective of Sex Workers and their supporters. They actually have multiple titles. And this is from an activist perspective. And of course then we have this big elephant in the room. The China factor in these protests. And she's again from Academia Seneca will present on this topic. And if we manage, the aim we have is that we'll finish our presentations in the first two-hour session. They will have a final Q&A session. And hopefully we'll get in our final speaker. And that's Chohuan Mei, who is, oh yeah, at the back. Chohuan Mei is from the sociology department in National Sun Yat-sen University in Galshaw. She particularly thought it would be important to actually bring in the non-Taipei based perspective on the sunflower movement. So she'll talk about the southern angle of this movement. Okay, so the aim is that each presentation will be about ten minutes. We'll do our best to keep to that kind of time. So first of all, Ketti, over to you. Thank you. Thank you, David, for inviting me. Can you guys hear me okay? So it's a pleasure to be here at SOAS. And the past two days have been really great. It's not only an opportunity to present my observation and do a presentation, it's also a very good opportunity for me to learn from all the participants on the panel. So today, being the first speaker, I will talk to you guys about the causes of the sunflower movement. And I will also show you photographs that I've taken being on the ground in Taipei following some of the protests leading up to the sunflower movement. And then I will leave the rest for my colleagues to explain to you. So first part of the sunflower movement, why the causes? Since about two, three years ago, there's increasing numbers of protests in Taiwan. So sunflower movements, for me personally, it's this umbrella movement or umbrella opportunity for activists, students, people who advocate for different issues to kind of exert or escalate what they've been protesting about in the past two years, but without avail, without any answers from the government. Like for example, people are worried about safeguarding Taiwan's democracy. They're concerned for Taiwan's sovereignty. They're concerned of the China factor that affects people's livelihoods, way of life. The concern for the future by young people. And most of all, it's the frustration by the government's irresponsiveness to different activist groups' demands. So what do they do at the end when... I guess the question that I want to pose to the audience is that what do you do after a year of following rules or acting within legal boundaries that you try to submit names to participate in public hearings so you could have your voice heard in the country's legislature? What would you do when you continuously submit petition letters to the government? But nothing really happens. Do you escalate or do you feel deflated after a year and just gradually go away? But what happened in Taiwan is that the students decided that they will not go away. So they went inside of the legislature, which became the sunflower movement that you see right now. So this is what happens on March 30th, where 500,000 protesters swarm the streets of Taipei in front of the presidential office. And this is the amount of police that the Taiwanese government kind of advocated to try to deal with the situation. But what I want you to understand is that sunflower movement did not happen. It did not begin like this with tons and tons of government's police officers. It began with a series of protests. For example, demolitions of Chinese immigrants to Taiwan's home in the Huaguang community where students continuously protesting and of course the community went down. This is another photo that I took of a woman crying in front of her house. So there's student activists trying to help her. The Lershan Sanatorium for leprosy patients. The sanatorium was built in the Japanese era so there's both historical value of the sanatorium and also the safety reasons for the patients who still live there. Are you okay? So these are the activists who were kneeling and bowing on the streets trying to convince the government to stop building a train depot under the sanatorium which has the possibility of having the mountain kind of cave on the sanatorium. And of course with no avail the bottom picture is when my husband and I visited the elderly patients at the sanatorium. And of course there's the demolition of the houses in Dapu Borough in Miao Li township of the county government to try to make way for a science park with the county's 72% of the land that was expropriated still being empty. So the county commissioner's behavior also sparked lots and lots of protests. This is demolition. And of course there's the death of an army corporal, Hong Zhongqiu which brought out about 20,000 quarter of a million protesters on the streets to try to change the court martial system. The group did not really follow through but then nothing really happens. The ruling administration party practically killed the bill. These are the people. And of course there's the laid off worker that was sued by the government and they've been protesting for the past decade or so. What happened was the administration decided to file a lawsuit against them to try to get the money that they received as their pension back from the government. And they were throwing shoes that government officials in this occasion. And then there's the ongoing Taoyuan Eritropolis. It's another land expropriation case where this is going to be the biggest land expropriation case to date in Taiwanese history. So about 7,000, 8,000 people will be dislocated but without a really concrete plan of where to put them. So all these things adding up with really no avail. Here comes the government signing the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement as part of the ECFA with China. And this is actually the very first protest of what you now see as the sunflower movement in front of the Executive Yuan by the civil groups and students. So it's about 20 people compared to the March 30th 500,000 people. This is something. And of course I was there but not a lot of media attention. So about 10 people and you don't really see a lot of police presence there compared to I think what you guys have seen a lot of them pushing and shoving maybe the accusation of police beating up protesters. This is really something very different. So what they did is that they protested and of course as I was saying they submitted petition letters to government officials saying can you please create this oversight legislation to try to monitor economic bills or any agreement signed Taiwan signs with China. So that's what they did on that day. And then they had the following month they had an evening concert July 28th outside of the legislature with people attending. And of course professor speaking this is the chairperson of the National Taiwan University's Economic Department and she's been going around giving lectures to people and also trying to lobby government officials to try to have oversight over this cross trade service trade agreement. And then the students start protesting outside of the legislature. I was surprised that after the sunflower movements started government officials or former government officials in the United States expressed that they were completely surprised by the sunflower movement. But if you see the play cards that was held by the students they actually says the university name and occupy. That was about a year ago. So what they did was that they were trying to attend public hearings inside of the legislature they submitted a list of names to the legislature of course they were rejected. So what the students did was that they start climbing over walls of the legislature. And this is September 30th later again convening outside of the legislature and this time they were saying that the cross trade service trade agreement is non-transparent and the government's behavior is unconstitutional and they're asking for officials to resign. And again they climbed the walls. So you see this climbing of the walls so somehow when in March when the students start climbing over the wall and actually went inside of the legislature it's something inevitable that you know that that will happen. So they were inside of the legislature but blocked by the police. Then they move in front of the president's office the same day. And also and the little the female students held the Republic of China constitution. And of course the police were invoking Bob Ryers against the students and now you start seeing leaders of the sunflower movement kind of emerged. So this is Wei Yang the spokesperson for the Black Island Nation Youth Alliance the main student organization that led the sunflower movement. And this is Ling Fei Fan that you guys probably know already who's one of the leaders inside of the L.I. and Professor Huang Guo Chang. I took this photo of him and it became an internet sensation. And it earned him the nickname Three Buttons Huang San Kou Why? Because because there's buttons not being buttoned up. And was it a deliberate decision? It wasn't. We were we were outside for I was following them for five hours and everybody was really sick and tired and really cold and it was raining and no government official would come out to speak to the students and him. So he grabbed the microphone in front of the president's office and he just started blasting with the wet shirts and hair and somehow this became one of the very favorite photos of female sunflower supporters. So again in November 14th outside of the straight exchange foundation trying to talk about the cross-trade service trade agreement and also these trade and goods agreement all the agreement on Taiwan signing with China again protesting civil and you know staying outside and this is October and now you really see a lot of English signs from the protesters but this is still kind of outside of government buildings continue protesting very consistent October 10th outside of the it's the Republic of China's national celebration day they're protesting but in the meantime the government started to file charges against the protesters for kind of scaling the walls so what happens when you did this for almost over a year and nothing happened right this is right before Christmas another protest about the cross-trade service trade agreement at the same time the opposition actually took charge of arranging the public hearings so the students actually participated in the public hearings now while protesting at the same time but then still not really receiving a lot of answers from the government and as I said in the beginning it was the concern of democracy, democratic values Taiwan sovereignty and signing this agreement that the effect that this agreement will have on the way of life and earnings and different things so what happened that broke the camel's back it was the 32nd and I think it was really important to note that there's a bottom line I think for the students and people of Taiwan is that once you cross the line you've fringe upon democratic procedures and people and democratic values this is when people start rallying up the national Chinese party legislator Zhang Xinzhong in 30 seconds he had declared that the meeting had started to evaluate the cross-trade service trade agreement within 30 seconds kind of hiding to the side next to the bathroom he said that we have enough people the review is done passed so that was what sparked and I think what caused the slew of people coming into the L.Y so this is what happens when they went inside and this is a photo outside of the legislature on that day when you see 500,000 people outside and you see a lot of the sign that says it's our democracy we're protecting our democracy and way of life so I think I'm going to stop right here telling you about the causes and what happens within the year and then my colleagues will kind of continue and tell you what happens the strategy that they use and the impact that the movement have on Taiwan great, thank you for those that arrived later we'll send this video to you first thank you so we've seen wonderful pictures from Katie so I'm going to give you some numbers figures so my talk will be understanding the basis of some of our movement well I think there are a lot of puzzle here, how can a movement that are continuing occupy an important governmental building for 24 days and if you see the opinion poll during the 24 days actually this kind of very radical illegal act has enjoyed certain popular support like more than 70% support is main demand that is to reject the service and trade agreement and to restart the negotiation 50% of people support that action but if we'll put that into perspective that Taiwan is another country that is famous for civil disobedience we have low rate of low tolerance of disruptive practice and even low rate of movement participation so it become a huge puzzle that how come that we have this kind of movement but I think if you look at my main power point is going to mix up Chinese and English, I'm sorry for that so I'm going to translate that speak that in English but I'm looking at an opinion poll which actually is not regular one it's so-called Taiwan social change survey which has been in place for the past 30 years which is most reliable social science survey data in Taiwan and just right at the end of at the end of last year from September to December and they have a new round of survey on national identity and I look at it is published actually after some of our movement in April so I look it up and you see some very interesting things from that and you get a clue why this kind of movement has such a huge impact on Taiwan so because the survey was conducted at the end of this year and before the three months to six months before the eruption or the protests so you can take it as a base nine condition to understand what average people in Taiwan are thinking about so I'm going to list what I found very some of the interesting features here one for so is the Taiwanization of national identity of Chinese or you are Chinese or you are both and for the past two decades you see there is a very interesting change here but the rate of a respondent that identifying themselves as Taiwanese increased from one third to almost three thirds from 33% to 73% and for those people who identify them as Chinese from 33% to just 1.1% so you see there is a huge reversal here that prior to that there was a predominance of Chinese identity so I think it's quite interesting here so and there are questions like for example what are your father like things like you were asking something about your orange but you see that 67% and 80% choose Taiwan or ROC but only less than 3% choose China and to the question whether you have some emotional attachment to Taiwan and for the past 10 years we see the number who say that they don't have emotional attachment to Taiwan decreased from like 70.8% to just 5.2% so and also because the state the statehood of Taiwan statehood actually is kind of international challenge so there are a lot of questions to ask people about that so to the question whether our territory how do you define our territory that 10 years ago there were 44% of people who say that our territory increased not only Taiwan Peng Hu, Jin Men and Ma Zhu but also including mainland China but last year only 6.8% has to kind of view and I think it's interest to the actually ROC has area one is mainland area one is Taiwanese area and also as a question of one China consensus to the question whether if we are going to have economic exchange with mainland China do you agree that Taiwan to have to accept that there is only one work China and Taiwan is part of China this kind of consensus called 92 consensus but actually mind you try to promote that during his last presidential election so you see that there is a very strong basis for Taiwanese identity and also I think this identity is quite interesting because this identity does not reject that the cultural heritage actually it's built upon that so the number of person who think that we should emphasize Taiwan's indigenous culture in our education really decrease from the past 10 years from 96% to 79% 77% at 57% of people agreed to this statement that Taiwan's ancestor is Huang Di Huang Di actually is the kind of mystical funding of the so called Chinese nation and we should carry out his blood and history and this is very nationalistic statement but you see that almost 60% of Taiwanese people agree with that and also more like our 82% agree that as Yan Huan Zi descendants of Chinese culture that we should work hard to promote Chinese culture so you see that even though that we see that in the second period of the Chen Shui Pian's administration there was an effort to disinitize Taiwan cultural education but most of people still think that on political side we can become probably Taiwan's political nation but we still think that culturally we belong to China I think that's reflected in the poll and also this kind of imagery of nationalhood is called Xiao Jing Jing I don't know how to translate that it probably means small innocent reflection that very peace like harmless imagery of Taiwan as a nation well on what aspect do you feel that our nation is you are proud of our nation so the number one is our sport it's very strange you know like for example Taiwan's team back it to the work of football but nevertheless we think we are strong it makes us people feel proud of and science and technology and our history and literature and art and from below you see that it's military power of course it's understandable and diplomatic influence, economic achievement and the condition of democratic how democratic politics operates so these are low and you see that a nation usually as in the traditional imagery or strange symbols is built on hard power like diplomacy and military strength but actually Taiwan people don't think that it represents our nation so that's why I call it Xiao Qing Xin so you see that our people people in Taiwan tend to think that kind of so power really represents Taiwan even though I understand it's quite crazy because so power discourse is so fashionable in China but what else, what do you do in China you see that there are a lot of great nationalists talk like Zhonghua Ming Zhu Wei Da Fuxing, Zhong Guo Meng it's very kind of built on a hard core hard power like you got aircraft carrier you got rocket but I think it's quite different from Taiwan so I kind of think that people in Taiwan really have a different expectation for what nations do for and also as for service and trade agreement I think one of the main arguments that that is good for Taiwan and my angel has been very persistent to argue that it is more adventurous for Taiwan I think the question can be asked people how do they feel about a decade of closer economic integration between China and Taiwan and I think there are main two arguments currently in Taiwan you see the opportunity you see that the land in mainland China is cheaper so we should encourage our business to go there to develop and that's also a rationale for signing the service and trade agreement because the Chinese govern a lot of Taiwan's service industry to have this opportunity but on the other hand we have a threat argument meaning that actually a lot of business opportunities have been stolen from Taiwan to China a lot of manufacturing opportunity that causing leading to the hollowing out of Taiwan we see a lot of this argument so to the question do you think that the progress in mainland China what kind of impact does that bring to you from the economic progress in mainland China I think 60.9% say it's better and 96% say it's not better and more than 100% say there is no impact and then followed by three questions that do you think that the Taiwanese people go to mainland China for investment or to work you'll be saying it's not good it's about a percentage of about 53.9% and that is very high but do you think that mainland Chinese come to Taiwan for investment only less than 40% of people say it's not good so you see that the majority of people in Taiwan don't think that Chinese investment is not good I guess it's probably because people are expecting more job opportunities and to the question what are mainland Chinese come to Taiwan for work and almost three quarter of people say no it's not good and you see that people really are afraid of that job opportunity will be like stolen or they'll be like lose a lot of opportunity in the job market so that's the summary of it so and to the question I think this question is very interesting because Chinese services is economic on the one side and political on the other side and you know that it's always combined together so to the question which of the following factor will increase the popular for peace for unification with China and the respondents having four options and I think more than 50% actually 54% of people think that if Taiwan and mainland China are getting closer economically that will increase the probability of unification so actually that people do perceive that there is a political impact out of economic ties but I personally think mind you do a very very bad job to help people to give up this suspicion if that is a suspicion and then followed by like mainland Chinese government political international status influence increase as a rise of China and 44% and then by mainland China don't recognize the sovereignty of ROC only 50% and mainland China will be continually ruled by one party that's only 77% so you see that people really have actually an acute sense of a political influence out of this trade agreement so overall you can say that people even before the outbreak of some flower movement do feel that it is very disadvantage more disadvantage than disadvantage and also you see that because it is free trade service and trade agreements also has to do with protectionism versus free trade so you from the opinion poll you to see that people think are more likely to think themselves are vulnerable because of a free trade and I think that has to do with the past economic stagnation in Taiwan we see wage stagnation and job opportunities are increased so there is a rise of protectionism attitude so for past 10 days more people agree that we should limit the import from foreign from other country and we should more people think we should ban foreigner to buy land in our country and more people agree that multinational cooperation are doing harm to the local industry you see these attitude on the quiz so my conclusion is that I think we have a rise of China just as a neighbor to Taiwan we have a very political strong consensus on Taiwan as a nation and this nationhood I would like to call it a new Taiwan independence idea because that is based on the existing way of life and recognize cultural heritage it is totally different from what you think in the old people in Taiwan that insist on you have to change the name of this country to change the national flag and to speak Taiwanese only and this new international imagery is based on so power but it is also challenging because of by the growing economic tie with China and there are also other state research indicating that the so-called peace bonus the peace bonus because they are the escalated tension in cross-strait but this new economic benefit are only enjoyed by a few people by a minority of people you see that only those new cap, new middle class those who are skilled or employed those with highest capital they have more frequent contact of even travel to China after the signing of Acre Fire in 2010 and also the more you think that you benefit from the cross-strait economic tie you tend to vote for the pink blue bodies and this likely these people are going to support Taiwan independence so there is a growing economic cleavage and that is reflected on partisan identity so so we do have political outcome so that is my survey before sunrise good afternoon well thank you so much for having me it has been an incredible past two days and a half and I think today should be very interesting as well as you noticed there is another Taipei Times veteran in the room hi Sam yeah well I am going to look at the role first of all the role that the media did play or did not play in coverage of events leading to the sunflower movement and the actual occupation and how the sunflower reacted to that media environment it is very clear well first of all I must say that my background is more military I have been covering cross-strait defense issues in the Taiwan straight for about seven years and a half but about two years and a half ago me and my wife Katie who gave the opening presentation today started doing photography and we thought that covering social protests in Taiwan were a good way to practice using cameras lots of colors, lots of facial expressions lots of flashy banners and all that some actions sometimes when the police is involved so we thought that was quite interesting we started with anti-media monopoly sometime in the middle of 2012 and quickly realized that I probably needed to shift my emphasis as a journalist operating in Taiwan from the purely military component of the cross-strait relations and start looking a little more at issues of social stability or social instability and one way of doing that was to monitor social movements and the various issues that were animating them if you will the interesting thing is it became very quickly apparent that traditional media had very little interest or even the capacity to cover those protests as Katie's presentation earlier showed very clearly initial protests tended to be very small easily ignored, non-dramatic the protesters played by the rules they applied for a permit under the Assembly and Parade Act they gathered on Catagalan Boulevard they gathered outside the legislature they showed their banners, they sang a few songs they went home so it did not give, for those of you who have lived in Taiwan you would know fully well that the news cycle tends to be extremely short and if this is not something that has sex in it or has scandal in it or violence it simply won't make the news and it became very frustrating for me because even as a journalist working for the Taipei Times I tried to pitch articles about what was really important with regards to Taiwan's future and the editors were like this is not really exciting we don't have enough space are we going to give you 250 words to cover that complex issue or dump it on page 4 or page 5 which is about as high as the cartoons and the ads we did not have obituaries in the Taipei Times otherwise it would have been right next to those then the other option for me was to pitch those articles to foreign media I'm from Canada I started approaching newspapers that I usually write for and it was the same thing very interesting but it's kind of insider baseball you're like okay well human rights in Taiwan well aren't they a democracy anyway so what's the big deal right you look next door at China and in North Korea with their nuclear missiles and then in the Philippines every week or so there's a natural catastrophe the government does not handle that pretty well Thailand, Kudeta and all that so unfortunately Taiwan is situated in a region where yeah it's true I mean human rights violations in other countries are far more serious than what's going on in Taiwan and as I said Taiwan according to many people had reached the end of history on their Francis Fukuyama's definition ill understood definition it became a democracy, ergo everything is fine right but just during the past two days there's this notion of quality of democracy as well it's a pendulum once you reach that stage it doesn't mean that everything is fine it can regress it can go back and to me this was the big story in Taiwan it was for various reasons going back in the in my book Wrong Direction so we really paid attention we would spend entire days before work after work during break on weekends going to protests on some days four or five protests jump in a cab go from one ministry to another go back to work play tag kitty continues taking photos I go do my job but over time what we did is built this composite picture of a constellation of different movements that we saw were gradually coming together the main problem being that the government institutions were not functioning and there were no longer listening to requests from the public when they played by the rules court orders enacting different laws and all that and calling upon society and the media nothing worked there was no response from the authorities or very rarely and the main opposition party the DPP as well was for different reasons not playing its role as a counter force to the going down both in the legislature and in the executive so what this means is that both traditional media in Taiwan and even more so overseas because most foreign media have been pulling out of Taiwan as well for reasons of budgetary reasons and lack of interest more and more the byline was Hong Kong was Shanghai was Beijing and of course you could be the best journalist on the face of the planet if you are based in Hong Kong you're just you're going to miss out on a lot of things that you would only understand if you're underground talking with people and seeing their reactions and all that so that was a major handicap as well in terms of people's ability overseas to understand what was developing inside Taiwan we saw the emergence of non-traditional Chinese language only web based media in Taiwan that only a small segment of Taiwanese were accessing and there were lots of photography videos, investigative journalism and there was follow up as well so people could actually over time understand what the issues were and where they were going but no traditional media picked up on those both inside Taiwan and even less among traditional media which means that overseas people had no idea what was going on in Taiwan last year on August 18th the Ministry of the Interior Building was occupied for 24 hours and the Chinese were not aware of this why would people do that early this year this grunt old former Air Force officer decided to crash his 35 ton truck up the steps of the presidential office most people did not hear about that or if they did they only heard the government version that he had lost a abuse case against his wife and that he was unhappy with his situation the night before he had sent a long list of cases pitting small individuals ordinary people like him against the powers that be those were legislators people with political connections big corporations and all that and he named specific cases most of which appeared in Kedi's presentation earlier Dapu demolitions, hua guang and other cases that he saw as injustice of the government or the powers that be against ordinary individuals in Taiwan in March 18 pretty much everybody in Taiwan and outside of Taiwan was surprised why are 250 students mostly students deciding to climb the gate and occupy the legislature well as we saw earlier climbing gates has turned into a national sport in Taiwan for those of us who follow those people we've seen them climb stuff over the past two years this was not a surprise for those of us who saw the lack of reaction by the government to mounting pressure from society as we mentioned earlier and Kedi used that term as well for those of us who followed those issues this was inevitable I like to say I saw it coming but I missed it by 12 hours initially I thought they were supposed to occupy the legislature on a Wednesday morning and it turns out they did so on a Tuesday night and I missed the first night because I was having dinner with people from the Canadian Embassy I could not just leave but I did show up the following morning so what that means now and then traditional media were then like commerce oh all of a sudden there's this occupation of legislature why are they doing this so Apple daily dispatches journalists and Liberty Times and Taipei Times and in foreign media those who are still in Taiwan also sent reporters but there is absolutely no institutional memory they do not know the roads that led to the occupation so what do they do well they turn to people like us and other academics and activists who had been following those issues for a while so people like Michael Cole became very very busy all of a sudden because you come home from a protest at seven in the morning and you get a call and it's like hello this is Al Jazeera in Qatar we would like to interview you about sunflower occupation and all that and where does it come from so which was great I mean we're more than happy to articulate the grievances and explain to an otherwise inattentive international community what this also means is that the sunflower movement built up over the years a capacity to use imagery to counter that lack of interest so very quickly with the sunflower movement we saw very keen use of new media websites Facebook pages, Twitter they needed a bit of help with Twitter because in Taiwan we don't tweet, we use Facebook so Katie had to teach me how to use Twitter as well I've become Taiwanese Reddit live feeds from inside the legislature which was turning into this immense classroom slash circus slash art gallery so it was easy it was possible for people who were not there physically to see what was going on around the legislature and also as we saw on some placards over the years Taiwanese realized that they needed to articulate their demands in English if it is to have any traction with foreign audiences I remember them coming to me two years ago they're like Michael, we have all these protests and it's never picked up by writers or AP or New York Times I told them either they're not in Taiwan and those who are taking pictures and they don't have a clue what you're talking about so you need to have at least some placards in English that help tell your story to an international audience otherwise it's too complicated and most people overseas I'm sorry they don't read Chinese so they call on to that as well and they went well beyond that because their website and Facebook pages was in multiple languages they had Arabic translations of every single press release by the sunflower movement we had Italian, we had French, we had Russian I don't know where they found those people and when Al Jazeera asked me to find an Arabic speaker from the sunflower movement and I said I don't think there's an Arabic speaker from the sun but she said but they have all these press releases in Arabic aren't there lots of Arabic speakers in Taiwan I'm like I couldn't find one, I couldn't find one but somehow they found someone who must have been studying in Saudi Arabia or something and was willing to do translations pro bono which was quite incredible so this is inside the legislature outside the legislature there's a lot of action as well an incredible number of young Taiwanese have DSLR cameras middle class people students, they have good quality cameras they can do good professional style photography which plays into the creation of that imagery and it increases the appeal of the movement as well cellphone cameras as well were quite helpful first time I had ever seen people were using UAVs on manned aerial vehicles I remember when Lin Fei Fan had his quasi-debate with Zhang He-Wa outside the legislature we're all around them on our knees and all that, there's police and government officials and Lin Fei Fan started talking and we hear this so everybody looks up and we see this little helicopter floating above and there's like Christmas lights and all that on it so we're like is that like the police, they now have UAVs and after the protest and the failure of that so called dialogue we saw the guy standing in the corner and he was showing his equipment to curious people and it turns out he was just ordinary civilian who thought it was a good idea to monitor what was going on from above well two days later we had five or six UAVs flying around the legislature and I always remember Bai Lang, former gangster talking and there's four or five of them just right above his head right so I believe the next step should be to have some missiles on those but we're not in Afghanistan yet so we're Pakistan also involvement by artists imagery visuals music concerts music videos animations collage cartoons Taiwanese are hugely creative when it comes to these things and now they are empowered by the internet they are empowered by a country that enjoys very high bandwidth so it's very easy for people to send that material extraordinary you go to the site the first night or the following night there's a few tens of thousands of people outside ELY the cell phones don't work because there's too much demand so we're all blocked basically two days later all the trucks from Chonghua telecom and all the other cell phones Far East they're all parked out there as well because it's a market and now there is demand so hey the cell phones start working again so you have the sites surrounded by tens of thousands of people you can access video which was quite useful in giving orders when people needed to move around but you can also learn while you're at the site which was interesting so the artwork on Jinan Road and Qingdao Road right outside the legislature there were more than a thousand artifacts that were collected after students and other movements left the legislature on April 10 this is now being saved at two different centers in Taiwan for historical reasons this was quite extraordinary and the amount of talent that we saw among the organizers and the followers was amazing I was blown away by the quality and the quick reactions and the wit, the humor I mean a book could be written about the sense of humor that we saw during the occupation and I don't think I'm funny enough to write that book but someone should so all of this plays into the emotional appeal the movement became much larger than the simple occupation of a building it became a concert of sorts and there were music videos that were created by Fire X, Fire Extinguisher a Taiwanese rock band and they created this hugely moving emotional video filmed partly inside the L.Y outside the L.Y and then all of a sudden we see all over the world there's different group of supporters they gather and they're also singing the song it's a song in Taiwanese so you saw footage from Japan you saw footage from here in the UK you saw footage from even back home in Montreal it's like minus 35 degrees outside so the poor guy who's trying to play drums is missing the beat all the time because it's too cold but they're still doing it right so it's extraordinary it has lots of appeal what this means the police and government took notice as well because they realized that this was extremely successful use of new media by the Taiwanese and they countered by creating their own units now the executive yen the Guamindang and the National Police Administration all have their new media units to try to counter what they say is disinformation and lies among Taiwanese civil society and now a bit more worrying is that there are signs that law enforcement would crack down on what we call citizen reporters who again as I said they have the means to document and generate pictures and videos now they're calling this incitement so if you as a citizen you go to the protest site and you film what's going on you post it on Facebook or on your website or on your blog in theory under the new regulations that were implemented you could get into legal trouble for doing that because you're inciting people to what they call violence or to civil disobedience if this had not been successful I think the authorities would have left them alone so to me this says again as we try to find a proper definition of a success anything that forces the authorities to overreach and to do things that to ordinary Taiwanese are obviously evidently anti-democratic it means that they're onto something and this is what we saw as well so once again traditional media in Taiwan and overseas were lagging behind history left them behind as well Taiwan has moved on a bit of a problem is that the non-traditional media that really helped tell the story of our Chinese language only for the time being and there's the issue of financial viability as well especially with the China factor playing into advertisement revenue my fear is that those smaller media might be very quickly elbowed out so you're once again stuck with traditional media that are not serving Taiwanese public and not serving people overseas to this day most of the U.S. government most U.S. academics do not understand the origins of and the reasons for the emergence of the sunflower movement thank you very much it's really my honor to come here to share my observations and experiences in the sunflower movement and David told me that he wanted me to do some comparison the Wang Lili movement have you heard of that movement could you raise your hand if you heard about the Wang Lili movement okay half of them so more than half okay yeah so I need to do some explanation Wang Lili movement happened in 1990s and also in March so at that time we call it March movement and it's a student movement it's the first collectively organized student protest in Taiwan's history and the main the main goal is to have a democratic congress and democracy to end the so-called authoritarian period and this sunflower movement many journalists and many people try to compare it to the Wang Lili movement because it also happened in March and also the main driving forces is the students so it's also a very a grand scale use movement happened in the 20 years so I think it's actually it's really interesting to compare the two movements but I will do that later and then you can get the better things about what's going on in the Wang Lili movement and what's going on from my perspective with the sunflower movement I think first of all I can actually explain my role in these two movements in the Wang Lili movement I would say that I was one of the student organizer from the very beginning to the very end the Wang Lili movement only lasts for one week and we gathered at the I think the most we gathered about like 6,000 students and we sit in the Zhang Gaixin Memorial Hall that's the most political square in Taiwan because it's the Zhang Gaixin Memorial Hall and in the center of the Taipei city and the sitting in continued for one week and before at the end of the sitting President Liedeng Hui, he was newly elected he agreed to meet with the student and he promised he's going to have some political reform to do the I mean to response to our appeal and after 24 years I think that my role became one of the professor organizers specifically for the street classroom for democracy and I'm going to tell you what's that I think at the very beginning probably the first or second day of the demonstration because the students and the activists already occupied the congress and many professors including Xu Sijian he's going to talk about that later we were quite anxious we were worried that probably there won't be more students to come to join us so we were thinking about what can we do and then we decided that we have to initiate a new political action and what we can think of is that maybe we can have boycott classes or you can call it a teaching strike but we are the professors that's what we can do later on and after some discussion we figure it's better to do it in a soft way because in Taiwan the atmosphere was still quite conservative and we will be condemned as professors you know we ask students to go on streets so later on we call it that it's a street classroom for democracy so we claim that we as professors we will try every effort to hold our classes in the streets surrounding the legislative room mainly on the Qingdao Dong Road and Jinan Road besides the gathering and lectures held by the NGOs there over the 20 days in the street classroom for democracy we organized more than 121 lectures the topic ranged from democracy constitution reform civil disobedience we talked about China and cross trade business alliance this kind of topic for example Xi Jinping he gave many lectures on that and we also analyzed how globalization and free trade affect class migration, gender as well as ethnic minority and we also discussed local history and multicultural besides this intellectual content and we also have some real practice about nonviolent tactic training because we already knew that the police might do something serious to take the students away from the street so we need to have some preparation not only the intellectual discussion because it's the street demonstration and in the second phase of the classroom we thought that it might be too how to say too the lectures just not enough, people feel boring right, they have been sitting there for the whole day, for accumulated day so we need to have some discussion because it's a democracy you need to form your own opinion so we turned some of our democratic classroom into the so-called this street, deliberation on the street because some of our professors we have been promoting deliberative democracy as a way to discuss public issues in Taiwan so it might be a good idea for those sitters to discuss the related issues so we even organized 11 days of deliberation on the street to let the people have the chance to have informed discussion to form their own opinions about the service and the trade agreement so we divide the issue into the different trade, different industry and invite the experts or insiders to talk about the crisis they were facing and how they look at the service and the trade pact and at the end of the demonstration we even organized with the agreement from the decision-making body, we organized an overall people's congress Renmin Yi Hui to propose a people's opinion report Renmin Yi Hui Yi Jian Shu on the close trade monitoring mechanism at that time the main appeal is that we need to have an unjust version of the close trade monitoring mechanism and we want the congress to pass that before they proceed a real discussion about the close trade the free, the trade and the service and trade issue yeah in short I think I will say that these are the efforts came from a group that they fear they can use the expertise of social science or history or street activism to help all of us to better analyze the situation it's also a self-educating and mutual learning process for all of us actually many of us are the first time we see the issue but we try to use our discipline to analyze the issue that actually our government never knows okay now I'm going to talk about my comparison of the two movements before that I think I should talk about how did I get involved actually on the March 18 I'm seeing you talk about the March 18 the student occupied the congress I was there the reason that I was there is not because I have been long concerned about the issue I'm concerned about the issue but I was too occupied by other issue but I knew that some of my NGO friends they have been following the issue for a long time through the Facebook and I feel it was pity that actually just two days before March 18 only a few activists on the street sitting there very lonely and I feel quite guilty so I think I should join them so on the March 18 I was just there and I thought that this should be supposed to be a big gathering because you know lots of Facebook advertisement to call for people's attention say it's a crucial point because the 32nd thing and I thought maybe it should be at least a few thousands people show up but you know when I was there and I figure it's less than 500 people so I feel very pessimistic so I decided maybe I should go to have dinner okay actually I went to have dinner near but I stayed there for like two hours and feel very hungry and I had dinner with a Melinda friend and also an activist and I went back to legislative room and knew that the students have already rushing and occupy the congress so my first reaction is how wonderful the issue was safe this going to be the headline of the newspaper tomorrow because I knew that if you only have five people probably even the liberty probably only the liberty newspaper in Taiwan will give some coverage so it's not going to work so I was just so excited and I decided I should do something to contribute okay so later on I went there almost every day so that's the reason my book manuscript has to be delayed okay okay yeah so I think for me if the students haven't rushed in the congress the issue would just die no care further after the pact already passed so actually I'm very grateful that those activists took the risky action when the ruling party dominated the whole congress and the opposition party being incapable I think this is the only result not all the illegal majors are illegitimate I will say okay we knew that is illegal okay and if we look at that 24 years ago I would say that you know the wild lady movement is a crucial point that we brought through the chain of authoritarian rule to pursue democracy that's the issue you know at that time now we already have democracy but it's only an electoral democracy and this democracy is facing the crisis of being running away so I will say that you know Taiwan is a young democracy now all the young democracy can be consolidated and the many conditions weakened that possibility like the judicial will establish a judicial system media environment but we lack those kind of conditions not to mention that we even got the so called the China factor I will say that the social movements are the possible or even the only result for the civil society to safeguard our democracy so so you can say that the wild lady movement to push or to grasp the democracy and hope to speed up the democratization and the sunflower movement to let the democracy not to be taken away or to be grasped away I will also say that these two movements both are part of the result of party values in 1990 KMT is in authoritarian regime while DPP has the so called although DPP was the main leading force of the opposition but at that time DPP has the so called Li Deng Hui complex because Li Deng Hui is the first Taiwanese people being elected as the president so DPP want to DPP didn't want to strongly protest to hurt Li Deng Hui's chance of getting elected safely however the students didn't care who became the president we were more concerned about the democratic procedure so we launched a sit-in without any imagination that it might succeed and this time the KMT again violated the democratic rule and DPP fear to fight against it so when opposition party, media, judicial system didn't, you know, often didn't function well I think we can only rely on civil society to mobilize itself to safeguard democracy we want okay and then we try to do some generational comparison I would say that my generation the wild Li Li generation is older than us we grow up in an authoritarian era so democracy is something we read about we heard about but not the thing that we live in we even feel that it was extremely lucky that we can witness democracy's arrival because we became very old however to the younger generation they grew up and live in democracy they were entitled to it so anyone wanted to take it away from them they might got very angry because they think they're entitled to democracy so they are willing to fight for it so I think that's a very important differences and in a very legitimate way okay and this issue is not only about democracy also about their future their rights as employees I think they sense the opportunity as well as the risk of the China as a market for them and they already knew that the differences between China and Taiwan and the cherish the freedom democracy and as well as the ecological environment we have here in Taiwan okay and I would say that you know okay there's always some core activists and then comes the successful mobilization the core activists of the wild lady movement are the fruit of 10 years of student movement on campus all over Taiwan in comparison the core activists of sunflower movement were more the result of Street Guerrilla I think Michael analyzed that in his paper the Street Guerrilla style activism since the wild strawberry movement of 2008 I would say that the wild strawberry movement was the first social movement in Taiwan against the China's influence on democracy okay so the training ground and the ways of organization or the ways of seeing movement are quite different I mean the if you try to compare the wild lady core activists and the sunflower activists in 1990s the campus issue the movement and democracy are the main issue and students were organized along the line of campus club and the different universities the core activists are deeply involved I mean the sunflower movement core activists they have been deeply involved in all kinds of street demonstrations and living in a digital era the facebook or bbs nowadays facebook is the way that we can quickly mobilize and connect with each other so the social media and technology does fundamentally change the way now the younger generation of activists participate in the sunflower movement okay okay lastly I will talk about the movement impact I think we all maybe you don't know that but you know under the influence of wild lady movement Taiwan went through the constitutional reform and then we got a new in the democratic congress although now you know we saw it's not functioning very well I would say that the most important impact of the sunflower movement is the shaking up awakening process of Taiwanese people to be aware that this is a serious issue for Taiwan's future we have to act on that okay and the young people spirit have moved many people they already feel they are kind of you know none to the older political issues in Taiwan okay yeah no matter what happened to the cross trade relations next one thing I can be sure is that the Taiwanese civil society is no longer a constant hopefully for the better it has become a variable in the future affair of the cross trade relations okay thank you good afternoon my name is Zhang Rongze and this is Lola Gong Youqian and Zheng Xiaota we are from the people's democratic front and we are a community of we are a political party and community of social movements NGO as well for them I'm doing work with sex worker and she's always migrant yes and I like to talk in a mixed way my English escapes me all the time when I'm nervous so I'm going to speak half in Chinese half in English so I I was trained as an academic many years ago and then I'm active now full time and also I get married talking about social message I was just sending a video for my daughter just right now and I've been father of a seven year old and so I'm also a city and nobody so I will think and talk at the same time all this level I in recent years in Taiwan I think I can gradually feel a sense of anxiety in Taiwan about living in Taiwan and this anxiety I will think is political in a way that they are many crisis there are many things we can we have to feel anxious about so we have food safety problem we have we don't we don't know when if the new career plans will explode and we have we have Bei Jie when you are just getting off the work and then maybe something happen to you so there are there are elements of insecurity in your life and as activist or as regular citizen in Taiwan when something happened to you what would you do politically I mean you talk to your leader or talk to your legislator to cancel your pocket ticket to cancel your about this about life your life doesn't your street life doesn't work for your for your and as when there is a victim or there is someone need help come to us we go to the legislator asking for a press conference we don't be there to change your law but somehow in this year I find kind of frustration is because nothing seems to work anymore personally I was not afraid of confrontation with the police I was arrested about two or three times I kind of remember but somehow all these things doesn't work anymore even you have a violence confrontation with the police so far the system doesn't change at all so for me this occupation of the Li Fa Yuan is kind of new and very symbolic to me because Huai Li Fa Yuan I participate in the occupation of the Nei Zheng Bu as well but I think it's still very different to occupy Li Fa Yuan Li Fa Yuan is supposed to be the place where democracy happened we vote for Li Fa Yuan and supposedly they are going to represent their interests and making decisions but somehow it's all failed the system doesn't work anymore so I think it's symbolic in this way that this happens in Li Fa Yuan so it's the Li Fa Yuan who got occupied that's Zhong Tong Fu Li Fa Yuan so I think this event is important for me two things first is that the representative democracy in Taiwan we work for this in the past in the past 50 years and then we have it's for almost 20 years it's come to it's come to a limit it's come to a limit it's come to a limit it's come to a limit for it's to go on and another another thing I find symbolic is that for a two party system you know the Guo Ming Dan just like dinosaurs they just die, go die Guo Ming Dan is just nasty and evil but for the Ming Jin Dan they are not functioning they are not there at least they are not up to what people expect from an opposition party that's why people took direct action occupy the parliament I have a note I forgot the old people old people's enjoy and there is a I was also in the Ye Bai while living old generation I don't have this problem at all what else so I mean in general people can people feel all this uncertainty and now we are in the age of globalization okay so a lot of, not only the D5U is no longer a place for making a real decision for people but a lot of decision are not taking in D5U you all have the all these serious trade this is the Mi Si Jiao Yi between the partition and the cooperation and you have a lot of our decision are made a million miles away by a foreign cooperation a lot of decision are not taking place in D5U so D5U D5U start to be a place for real part for people and it's also about I agree in these elements in these movements there are lots of China effect if you want it about this we feel a sense of uncertainty about this neighbor awful ambitious neighbor okay and it's also about all these things combined together I think it affects young people most that's why there are lots of young people showing up in this recent wave of social movements they don't know they kind of don't know don't know what to expect from the future I can I can say that so for me as as an activist and Zhang Sanli nobody usually I like to talk about strategy so what can you do politically there are three strategies first feel frustrated watch your TV whatever that's the first thing you can do usually people do things like this start to feel even more distant from the politics I think this is a good strategy for a regular city quite a reason usually what happens for me in represent democracies there are two benefits first you find someone who repents your interests so it's all his responsibility I can go home and watch TV and then when there's something wrong it's all his fault we always do things like this and the strategy is I feel frustrated and go home feel distant and the second strategy for another representative find the next Min Jing Dang find a better one the next man is always better I'm not sure and the third strategy is what we are trying to do we are experiments we are doing experiments about many of this alternative way of direct democracy for example we have independent candidates running for different seats and yeah I will just leave it to Lona so probably we will use some picture and then to show you what we have done during this the sunflower movement Rosa already mentioned before we already practice some of our political principles, some of our ideas so that's why actually we are all from different kind of NGO, we are all social activists but we find out actually we want to resolve the problem probably we need to focus on the political system we need to change some political system Rosa mentioned about the third role actually is if all we try to involve ourselves in the, if we all have the political awareness it means we if we can become, we really recognize we are the master of this country probably something can a little different so when we we are one of the group of so many different kind of group outside the legislative so probably you can see this picture this is someone took this picture and put on the FB and then I was informed after one week this is the second day of sunflower movement and then we just try to bring a small microphone and then try to sit on the street and then try to discuss with people what's the what's the fumao what's the effect of fumao and then we listen to people's opinion and suddenly a lot of people get together so this is how we start and then so almost 23 days we stay there and then we also join different kind of activity organized by the students and then we, I think this one maybe Xiaota can a little more explain about we try to occupy a small place maybe 150 150 meter from the legislative unit we have a 10th layer running for 24 hours and we also participate in the occupation inside and then we occupy this place for what and then actually we try to use this place to get together people and then we try to discuss with different kind of issue relate to the citizen so this is one of our activity at land 9 many people pass by and then we try to discuss with them why you are here, what you want to do and what you expect to do yeah, this is our 10th um um yeah actually it's because we think they are doing nothing inside the Li Faiyue so we should just have our own Li Faiyue outside and during those 3 weeks we actually have like a 2 street space for us, for people for people who want to say their opinion and for people who can just freely discuss on the street that's why we set up our tent there like on the second day until the last day yeah and this is what we have done outside in our area and then we raise a kind of topic and then we try to divide people in a small group because we find out everything we need to we need to let everyone have the chance to speak out this may probably you can call is a kind of informed discussion, yeah and then we do, we quite do a lot about this one and this is well disabled people so who participate us actually from different kind of group also I need to say majority they are from some under privileged persons for example, Zhiwen the man in the right actually he cannot go in but at the end he did went into Li Faiyue but what if he he won the election Li Faiyue is not for this kind of person, there's no for us it's like we should just have our own Li Faiyue on the street and if you want to discuss things then you can come here and you can talk about your own interest and what kind of law you want and what is Fumao affects you and what do you think you really want to change so this is why I think the open this is I think the open space is a very good a very good opportunity for a group like us because we can really like during those three weeks we're really on the street and just talk to people and because of the Soundflower movement people just come and we can talk to people easily and for me it's like because we've been doing social movement for so long and sometimes normally it's like we go to a place and try to talk to people but during those three weeks like people just come and talk and all about all about what they they want to change from the nurse union from the nurse union and also we try to discuss about why they want to form a union what's the benefit as a patient or as a nurse so we try to link this kind of discussion and then of course we also join a big event because the students or a lot of NGO maybe later maybe we'll mention about that one or Huame will mention about that one because they do organize so many events we also participate and be invited so this is one of our group they participate this and then I think I need to say there are a lot of people it's not just only students during the Soundflower movement and then there are so many people this is a letter if you see on your left side this is a letter made by a workers he is a cleaner he just came to participate our assembly on March 28 and then he just gave us a piece of paper they asked us to try to announce for him because he said he just only graduated from an elementary school so he never holding a microphone before so he was ashamed and he don't want to go in front to make a speech so he asked us to try to speak out so and then we encourage them to hold a microphone by himself so that's why finally everyone encouraged him so that's why finally this is him he holding a microphone and on his letter he mention about everyone imagine nation how to run this country so he also have his own idea even he is a workers so he try to explain his idea and then he want to encourage everyone to participate facing a political change and then so after that day he participate our assembly every day after his work and then after two weeks participation we encourage him to become a host of our assembly to host our discussion and then actually he also afraid but we try to encourage him and then he make his decision so he did it so I think for us this is very important for us because we do encourage people and then step by step if you already have this kind of design and then you also feel a lot of frustration or disappointment you need to take some action so is a very very good example yeah ok so and then of course you can see and this is Xiaotai in the middle the young generation inside the legislative the old generation always outside for me like actually I was on that night when they ran into the Li Faiyuan I was writing a rewriting essay to saw us good student so I was working until 3 am and then I on the second day I went inside to Li Faiyuan and during the weekend they asked us to go support them because they were quite afraid the students inside were quite afraid because it was the first weekend so they think the police is going to try to break in and they think we are more experiment like because I was my first big protest was in Hong Kong 2005 the NTWTO1 so we were beat by the Hong Kong police and I was in detention jail for several days and I was like I think it's quite different because I was quite worried inside the Li Faiyuan what if the police really come inside I was like what I tried to do was just like waking people up and just like saying things but I have a great story from inside because I was talking to a young 19 years old boy he was so angry and he said like who's fault? it's all their fault the older generation's fault the blue and the green and he's like because they did it so bad and I have to be here from their action so what are you going to do? okay we were here and what's your next step if you already knew this is something you need to do I think it's their fault but you also want to take your responsibility for that and do something more so after two hours chatting and smoking and eating the next morning he came to me and he said I did something after talking to you he said he went to the front door and talked to one DPP legislator he told him Wei Yuan it's your fault DPP Wei Yuan said not my fault it's his fault and then trying to do something but for the Wei Yuan and for the people who are still in that system they can easily say it's not my problem it's his problem so they can just throw in this bulb in between them and this game is so familiar for them they feel safe and this whole system's function and working for their own interests some flower movement we still need to face this question like what should we do next and what else more can we do but you find you have to come to who is the real master of the country in general in representing we are only master for one day and then we are saved for next four years okay so it's wrong okay this is from our perspective yeah I do know like we can I think it's the 29th of March I think it learns and there's also a small protest activities hopefully in the next hour we can hear more from you who may might went there and this is from us it's okay so we moved to our last but least kind of speaker Professor Xu Zijian from academia in Seneca Xu Zijian is going to talk about a topic that a lot of us have touched upon that's the China factor in these protests okay over to you okay thank you I apologize for not being able to prepare a PowerPoint but today basically I'm going to talk about our four talking points just to elaborate in advance the first is something that some of our colleagues have mentioned already that the sunflower movement is not a single event it's events after a long process of accumulation of multiple social movements expressing people's a long time dissatisfaction and the second point is I think there are three major contacts in this sunflower movement is one of them and the third after elaborating these three contacts I would like to say the China factor amplifies the other two contacts I will elaborate that and the lastly the last point is the impact of China factor after the movement to the Taiwanese society particularly civil society organizations okay so very quickly about the first point as Michael and Caddy has mentioned through their presentation that the sunflower movement cannot be seen as a single event it's a long process of accumulation of frustration anger and the feeling of that it's necessary to take some further or further action or escalation of our confrontation to the non-responsive government so this is there is a very strong feeling of this I have interviewed many civil society organizations and they have the feeling that they have stepped to the edge of a cliff that if we do do not take any further action there will be the end of Taiwan something like that so a very strong feeling like this and then the second part is three major contacts of the sunflower movement the three major contacts first is defending democracy second is anti-globalization and the third is the China factor defending democracy I think is the most conspicuous factor that motivates people particularly young students and a lot of them are high school students the high school is during the midterm you know a lot of high school students from southern Taiwan eastern Taiwan they didn't tell their mom and parents take a train come to Taipei and their parents came to Taipei to find them a lot of cases like this a lot we have to try to help those parents I don't know how to help them because these high school students think the 30 second scenario is really ridiculous it's unbearable how can things like this happen okay there's a very strong feeling that the government is destroying our democracy and also during the there was a series about two weeks or one week of public hearing before this incident and the public hearing itself the whole process it's a joke because of course a lot of NGOs or scholars were invited to express their opinions but eventually we found that the ruling party the committee did not take any point into consideration so the whole thing went to no avail so we thought that's a joke but also there's a very important background that we think should bring into your notice that is in last year 2013 there was a very important incident called the September power struggle the September power struggle is that the president, Ma Ying-jeou started a power struggle against the chairman of the legislative Yuan accusing him of I forgot what was the accusation accusing him of colluding with huh colluding with opposition some not writing but but this is affecting a judicial case something like that right? but the evidence came from illegal illegal wiretapping yeah illegal wiretapping and the government official just made a report the report itself is illegal and the president accepted him and used this as the evidence to accuse the chairman of legislative Yuan I mean this is ridiculous nothing more than power struggle but eventually this case was brought to the court and the mind your side failed so I mean this angers a lot of people too we thought that the president himself is doing great damage to our democratic system all these things undermine the government's legitimacy and of course as said by our colleagues we have accumulated frustration with legislative Yuan as a political institution too particularly NGOs that have made multiple appeals for various reasons to affect the legislation but all came to no avail so that is the defending democracy element the second element is anti-globalization a lot of the groups involved in this movement came because we're not signing this free trade agreement service trade agreement with China this is negotiated because previously we already have economic free framework economic cooperation agreement agreement across the street so according to that framework we're supposed to talk about service or commodity free trade agreement but there are already many organizations in Taiwan opposing not only a free trade agreement with China but free trade agreement with any country because they thought that this will this will worsen the many conditions such as salary conditions such as social disparity social injustice will lower the welfare level or will bring environmental deterioration or lost jobs things like this so a lot of groups join this movement because of that not because of sometimes they don't have strong feeling against China per se but they are against the globalization the third is of course the anti-China there are also different levels of anti-China sentiment the first of all is that we feel further economic relationship with China may threaten may threaten Taiwan's sovereignty this is the first the second is about the threat to Taiwan's freedom of speech freedom of everything and human rights because of the bad record of Chinese human rights itself is the economic threat that the Chinese investment as they are strong competitor so closer economic ties may bring not only or not not economic opportunity but economic threat the last is that may cause stolen jobs or stolen human resources that so there are these three different contexts but these three contacts may interact with each other for some groups they may come for all of them for some groups may come for certain two or certain one factor but the most important point I would like to raise is that the China factor itself or the influence of the China amplifies the effect of the other two factor this is the most important thing that I found first of all China factor amplifies the threat to democracy by the mind demonstration through the process of the negotiation of service trade agreement first of all service trade agreement was signed in June last year but it took everyone by surprise because the mind demonstration didn't inform anyone in advance all of a sudden they declare the agreement signed and everyone says what you can tell us not even to the KMT legislators but actually one government official told me while I was chatting with her she said well I have to be honest with you we did consult some of our own party legislators they did offer some opinions on the agreement itself but eventually nothing was changed after the negotiations so even the KMT legislators they were angry they were furious they thought mind you did not answer their question at all it was too arrogant so that is the reason why in legislative there was a bipartisan agreement solution that the agreement itself has to be reviewed and passed by the consent otherwise it will not be put into effect because according to the current law it does not have to have the consent of the legislative union as well as the legislative union does not have the opinion within 30 days if the legislative union cannot reach a consent on amending the articles the agreement will go into effect automatically that is the current law it's ridiculous it's ridiculous but now the KMT joined the DPP to have a resolution that it has to be reviewed and passed bipartisan so this proves that the passing or the signature the negotiation itself lacks legitimacy not only for the opposition but also for the KMT legislators and of course this ridiculous scenario of 32nd passing of the agreement angers everyone every reasonable human being and and everyone has this perception that my hasty approach of passing this service trade agreement why did he do this in this way because we thought he would like to do this in exchange for a chance to meet with Xi Jinping for his personal reason I mean so we are already very angry and then he was proposing this to Xi Jinping time and time again recently he did it again so how can we not connect these two things together and then we already have China's threat to Taiwan's freedom for example freedom of speech we had a very important movement that is the anti media monopoly movement because one Taiwanese business who had very big investment in China he already had a newspaper in Taiwan we have only four maybe four major newspapers five major newspapers in Taiwan and he had already one originally invested by a Hong Kong businessman it's called Apple Daily and the Hong Kong businessman wanted to sell this newspaper and this Mr. Cai he wanted to buy that so we thought we only have five and you are going to have two of them you know this is too much this is monopoly and so we protest to the government eventually we exert pressure to the government the government did not allow this this joint venture so the shadow of the threat of the Chinese threat to our freedom of speech is already there and a lot of people we think that you know after we thought we have torn down authoritarianism in Taiwan for about 30 years but now it's new ghost of authoritarianism a coalition of KMT plus CCP is coming back to restore a new authoritarian rule in Taiwan this is unbearable so this is also how China factor amplifies the threat to Taiwan's democracy the China factor also amplifies the threat of globalization first of all mind your administration particularly in the second turn we wanted hyperdevelopmentalism a line of policy in Taiwan so the government is very active in grabbing the land so we have this land conscription anti-land conscription movement and strengthening or opening the avenue for monopoly and the deterioration of salary and working conditions like this and usually it's perceived that the service trade agreement will also open the door for not only for not only the Chinese investment but also the Taiwanese business itself to strengthen their monopoly for example service trade agreement we think the most important sector that push forward this legislation in Taiwan are banking because Taiwanese banks are much more efficient business wise much more efficient than the Chinese ones in providing services various kinds of services and more internationalized standard services so the Taiwanese banking are very eager to open branches in mainland China actually they have already do they have already opened already done something like this but it's not legal yet so they want to legalize this so they think service trade agreement will do do them favor but other service business like beauty salon now we have some major corporations in Taiwan they themselves actually right now exploit the student labor very much they are also behind the scene pushing forward a service trade agreement so they are not Chinese investment but they are aiming at the Chinese market so China factor does not have to directly from Chinese investment China factor is the influence because of China and also we are very afraid that the large usually when the Chinese investment comes it usually comes in large scale corporation so we are also very afraid that this large scale corporation may form some kind of monopoly or lower our welfare welfare standard but lastly let me talk about the impact of this movement through this movement of the China factor Taiwanese society first of all I have to say through this movement a lot of civil society organizations are originally it's difficult for us to work together but through this movement we form some kind of coalition willingly or unwilling we are forced to work together to defend ourselves I have to say this is magical because usually civil society organizations or NGOs we focus on our own issue, policy issue and that keeps us very busy already usually we don't have time to pay attention to other people but right now a broader context forces us to work together that also emancipates us from our narrow mindedness to a broader political context China factors being one of them I think economic globalization is another so now I think NGOs in Taiwan are much more open minded and we have to we are also forced to politicize ourselves to be more willing to get involved in broader context of politics another thing is that the civil society organization in Taiwan used to be narrow minded but right now a lot of NGOs right now are more alert to the influence of China factor and more aware of it more alert to it so in that sense the NGOs are much more easier to mobilize ourselves to help each other in a broader context of issue I think I just finish here, thank you The Sunflower Movement one of the things we've discovered from some of our discussions over the last couple of days is there's actually quite a significant regional variation in the way some of these social movements in Taiwan have been operating so we thought it would be particularly useful to get this other perspective from Choyubin and Chihuahua mate I should mention that Choyubin brings the perspective even further south because Choyubin is based in Pinong University of Education and one of the things I noticed from keeping an eye on their Facebook was how active they were in terms of arranging students to come from up to Taipei so I should also say both the Chos have a very close UK link they both did their PhDs at the University of Essex so we actually have three University of Essex okay so and what we'll do is after this very brief southern presentation then we'll move into the Q&A session so Yubin, over to you okay thank you first I want to correct actually Pinong is northern then Kaohsiung check the map okay slightly northern but you've got to go through Kaohsiung to get to Pinong yes that's actually to the east okay like Sijian said this movement is kind of magical something incredible happen for example these two pictures the first is Zhanghua Shifan University people from Taiwan then you will know the normal university is the most conservative university in Taiwan sometimes even conservative than the military university but you can see and the Zhanghua Shifan University is the one of the most conservative one so the students will come out and then the second is the people want to donate the money on the Jinan Road this happen every day and let along when the campaign start using online donations the endless money just keep going in even in the south some and NGOs help to receive the donation from ordinary people and in two weeks time we got more than 2.5 million Tony's dollars to help the students who don't have money to buy the ticket to Taipei we just keep using this money sending all the students up to Taipei so actually this is not only a student this is a movement of society the whole society not only students outside you can see many NGOs all the flags from different non-government organizations or social movement organizations and like Sijian said most of them actually in the past they knew each other but sell them walk together closely but in that three weeks they all walk together closely and afterwards still going on okay I want to say something about what happened in Kaohsiung actually this is quite very brother because I took it we clutched with police it happened in I think it was 20th of July 2003 Jiang Yihua have a special public meetings Shuo Minghui in Kaohsiung and all the NGOs and students and so I don't have the opportunity to properly take a photo yeah so before 18th of March actually many things did happen this is this in November I think it's held by the Tray Union Federation in Kaohsiung Fu Mao Shuo Minghui and you can see Lai Zhongqiang lawyer was there and this is another president of the Union Federation in Kaohsiung went to Taipei to attend the protest in front of the presidential house and this is in the Christmas time in Kaohsiung I think it is the first march against it happened in Kaohsiung but only 200 people so this is what happened before and when the occupation happened the students from the south of course were so eager to go up to Taipei and so according to our statistic I think more than 60 buses I think more than 60 bus in Kaohsiung so if you come from Chiayi, Tainan and Pingdong probably more than 100 send in different time often in the midnight because we encourage them to took bus at 10 o'clock in the evening so they can arrive at Taipei around midnight 2 or 3 o'clock which would be the most dangerous moment of the day because most of the students who live in Taipei maybe go home to sleep so the people surrounded by the DGCDVN around the DGCDVN would become less so we encourage the students in the south to go up at that moment so they call midnight bus in Kaohsiung it also happen I think it's the third day of the campaign some people just post a message say let's get together at the Meridao Jieyunzhan at 7 o'clock in the evening and in the beginning probably dozens of people by end up with more than 4000 people in that MRT station and this is the first public meeting outside Taipei and then one more this was in at the Central Park in Kaohsiung and next day in Bo'er Iwun Teoching in Kaohsiung and then to the KMT Kaohsiung branch not only in Kaohsiung but also in Tainan and Jiayin together together yeah in Tainan it happen the same stories just a couple of people who post a message on Facebook say two days later let's meet meet up at the Chengda, Chenggong University, Nanhong Square and then turn out 4000 people show up so it shows that more and more people on the ground at grassroots level are trying to get involved this campaign especially for those who couldn't go up to Taipei and also this is the first strike voted by students to have strike this is the sociology department at Zhongshan University this is the teacher including Qiu Amei they later complain that actually it's more tired than normal time yeah because they still have to arrange activities through the daytime sometimes even at night so actually quite tired and of course the students in the south in different time went to Taipei and some of them come back several times of course they have faced some frustrations because you know the decision making system in this movement is kind of unique okay which is different from the white lady movement because some 24 years ago we had a demonstration on a square which is very convenient for everything but this time the main force were in Yichang and then there is a gathering there in Qingdao Donglu another one and in front of the Li Faoyuan another one so actually you got four you know four system is going on students actually feel frustrated because when they were there they couldn't do anything what they can do is just sitting there and do nothing they even could get the opportunity to show their support or they could speak up their voice so for example the Zhongzheng University students in one day before Xingzhengyuan they mobilized more than 300 students and sending more than 10 coaches to Taipei but after sleeping one night they decided to withdraw back to the campus and then start to launch the campaigns on the campus so it become amazing you can see the people gathering at the campus and singing Daoyu Tian Guang they are starting from them and including students from Zhongzheng University Zhongshan University they start to get a light together so they call themselves Mingzhu Hei Chao and attending the big demonstrations on 30th of March and I think one particular highlight is that when Taipei in the name of the alliance of students workers which they took bus with workers with the union members to Taipei together so this was happen at the moment and people in Kaohsiung who couldn't go up to Taipei they start to think what can we do locally so for example some teachers and parents they say maybe you can have a conference because there was in the beginning of April which is near Qingming Jie all the children sitting in Taipei couldn't go back to Sao Mu so they use this you know holidays to ask all the legislators to persuade President Ma doing something good please let our kids go home and we can say something to our ancestors so this is the conference what they do and then another group including the female scholars and the local feminist organizations they decided to launch a campaign called Lu Guo Lu Guo of KMT legislators so they they ask this KMT legislators have to do something have to sign agreement to actually to be against but of course nobody really signed it it attracts a lot of people for example this campaign to Lin Guo Zheng's office in Kaohsiung it attracts I think around 1,000 people to go there and so people local they can really do something a local but the only thing is that there are 2 few KMT legislators in Kaohsiung so only 2 so they did this another one twice so on the last day of the campaign in Kaohsiung we also have a demonstration at the same time in Kaohsiung center so the local students they decided not to go to Taipei to attend the final meetings gathering and they decided to hold a public meeting local so different civil organizations gathering there together and afterwards they even had a locally this is the locally this is the unofficial but more exciting public meetings afterwards so this is I just want to show you some pictures what happened in the south but I think the story won't end here because I think one of the big achievement of this sunflower movement is that we can see the really activated civil society in anywhere in anywhere I mean the friends in Penghu in the remote islands they think that the people start more concerned than ever about the public issues so this is what happened right after the end of the sunflower movement this anti nuclear movement so this was happening in Kaohsiung and many ordinary people in that involved and for example some young couples or mothers they bring their children to read points or read books on the station MRT and try to alert people how dangerous the nuclear powers is so this happened through the end of the anti nuclear campaign and now as far as I know the people in south now many of them have been involving in the campaign against free economic processing zone project the movement so I think this is very important and the big achievement of the sunflower movement because this kind of issues which according to government which is good for the economy in the past this kind of issues won't face a big against from the society but now the society will start to think um what you say the benefit from this project but the benefit to whom and who will be harmed this kind of questions start going to the mind of society I think this is a good and very big achievement of this movement so I stop here thank you it's definitely the biggest panel we've ever had okay yeah the front and then Isabel and also the non-response from the rest of the world and then later on I was part of the peace action in your state and I was a piece of part of Occupy New York but I guess of all these you can hear the frustration in my voice because we went towards what you know after the high 11 movement the winter came so I guess looking elsewhere in the rest of the world looking for some kind of inspiration we can see Tunisia working out Syria Egypt or Thailand so I don't know when you look for all these movements that are necessary we must fight on but do you have a model in your mind like how things should work or you want to have a particular go you want to push forward or what's the next step I think it's a very general question the biggest thing on my mind we would like to start on that one what's next what's next you asked very fun you have to ask very fun what's coming next week I can give it a I can give it a shot I mean the next step the most important step in my book is that they have to stay alive they cannot afford to disappear they need to keep the issue alive if the government goes back on its quasi-promised their needs to be consequences again now the current phase is Black Island Nation Youth Alliance and others are going around Taiwan in sessions so this is a form of recruitment right now they're trying to generate new leadership to bring new blood and keep that issue alive educate ordinary Taiwanese about those issues is that sufficient I would say the next step has to be they need to find a way to bridge activism opposition with those in government or within the institution who are able to effect actual change right now what I'm seeing is that the two entities are no longer talking to one another even the DPP has been alienated from social movements because the social movements have lost trust in the ability of the DPP to act as a counterweight someone somewhere needs to find a way to connect those two institutions again if for some reason the DPP fails to achieve that which is not impossible to see the emergence of a third force so far I mean there are rumors that and I believe those are completely unfounded that Lin Fei Fan and Sen Wei Ting did what they did because they have political aspirations in my book this is not the case I've been following these people for a while but maybe someone from that group will eventually have to make that leap and say you know what I know politics is dirty but someone has to do it because if nobody does it we're constantly going to be in that kind of nation where you're perpetually divided right so either you need, there was said yesterday at the conference, you need to bring government institutions closer to society or society itself has to move closer to government institutions and become part of it and try to change them from the inside so I guess as a general answer to a general question that would be my response Anyone else want to respond on that I'll briefly respond to that question a lot of things need to be down one of them is to start another long-term movement of constitutional reform what Michael just said a new third political force I think the periods of the new third political force depends on to what extent we can successfully change the rule of the game of political system in Taiwan to be able to do that we need a man with a lot of laws and also if possible the constitution my idea and the idea of many of my friends in Taiwan is to change the current what I call accountable presidentialism particularly the second term to a multi-party cabinet system which we think suits Taiwan better that's a short answer Yes I'm just trying to catch up the strategy I'm talking about I remember there is a speech that Chen Wei-ting gave when the whole demonstration is going over 7th of April on that day they announced they are going to end the occupation and they gave a speech on Qingdao because there is one stage on Qingdao and I think this video he is talking about is their speech on Qingdao and Chen Wei-ting making a joke on himself saying that he is getting more and more like my angel of course you hear about all these complaints about this decision making problem and I I think that's actually a problem because like I said it's your strategy is looking for next a DPD who can you trust you never know if your attitude is always like this looking for someone to replace you replace replace if your attitude is always like this then I don't I think it doesn't work the anxious is always there if your attitude is like this and what we are trying to do is the other way around for me for democracy and politics for everyone have different meaning but for me the most important two things about if you want to participate in decision making if you want to use your power and another thing if you want to take full responsibility of your decision as I said I think this is very difficult for how do you immature people immature citizens it's difficult totally against their normal rationality people will say I will work for you when there is something wrong there is all your fault for normal people they will do things like this but I think if we don't change this mentality then Chen Weiting I think Chen Weiting's worry is he he is right because in all these years we we talk we made a lot of negotiations with the Kuomintang and the third party but I said they are yes they can help you to a certain extent but the real thing is that if you have to know that the power you want you have to you have to know if you don't have the right to do politics then if you always are looking for someone to represent you then one day something will go wrong can you come back after listening to all your presentation I was wondering all of you actually took part in this movement the other document or mobilise students to do it or provide advice on how to test the strategy I think how much of China Factor actually play out in your life when you decide to do something we have this general discourse about how China Factor amplifies this or in the context of people to voice out their disagreement about their dissolution I think that as you self you act to this movement while working on it I'm just curious how China Factor now trying to mobilise you to do that before you respond let's just take that one other question I want to know if any of you had the chance to talk to elderly people elderly people we had the old generation but the old generation is not so old I think what's the role of the elderly when we talk about disadvantaged people disabled maybe they did do something I don't know I think one of the most interesting parts of that film are the clashes between those elderly protesters and the young students so I would really like to compare the two generations a couple of questions there who would like to respond first I'll go first again China Factor as a journalist what motivated me to pay attention to sunflower and what came before it well as I said I had spent most of my career as a journalist looking at military balance of power in the Taiwan Strait and became as the Chinese military became stronger and stronger and the Taiwanese military was stalled for a long time it still became obvious that using the military option against Taiwan is the last resort not what the Chinese government wants to do the consequences would be far too costly and they would not be a walk in the park it is still something extremely dangerous for the Chinese government so once you realize that this is their last strategy well then their preferred options are to find different means to take over Taiwan and to undermine its democratic institutions and this is when I realize a cross-strait services trade agreement were a part of a united front campaign against Taiwan to try to weaken it from the inside and forcing the NGO administration to adopt policies or means that were rather un-democratic and you see the takeover of Taiwanese media the influence of money the influence of banks, investors in Taiwan and in China so for me the China factor was actually a major factor in my decision to start paying more attention to social movements and their clash with a KMT government but also that Chinese specter behind it if you will second question elderly I've spoken with elderly I just came back from a conference in Houston at Asia Society it was a Taiwan heritage week or something and had a chance on the following day to speak with the local Taiwanese-American community and most of them would have moved it to the United States in the 70s and 1980s and then a lot of them were involved in the foremost association for public affairs and they tried to do certain things for Taiwan and there were so many of them after my talk they came over and they're like you know what Michael I had given up on Taiwan for so many years we tried to do things we tried to change things and we realized it's just only getting worse and worse and worse and now with Mainzhou and China and all that they said I had given up on Taiwan and then the sunflower movement occurred for most of them it was a surprise because as I said they were not getting the information that they needed but now they're like I'm full of energy again and there are people in their 70s and there are 80s and they're like what can I do now I want to help and we really need to have younger people in government and we know we really need to start listening to the younger Taiwanese-Americans who we've been for the most part ignoring for the past 20 years so I've seen this re-energizing of different generations of Taiwanese as well both within Taiwan and overseas so I think this is quite extraordinary as well sorry the out yes I think sunflower movement is not just a student movement like I talked to a lot of elderly elderly people there one he's a mainlander and he's like 85 85 for something and there's another one he's really amazing he said if it's at my time this the revolution is the only thing we need to do and it's for the main job government let's just do a revolution I was like okay but you know for me 85 years old yeah let's do that revolution how can you stand this situation let's have a revolution no for me I prefer I do want a revolution I prefer to do it in another way like I want everyone do know what what they're going to pay for this I don't just want like a revolution and with passion I want something we can constantly and for long term and change the system that's why we're saying like we want everyone can be the master of their self and can be the master of their right and can be the master of this government and for me in a way that's another kind of revolution that's how I respond to him but for me it's like okay I know you are so you are more energetic and more passionate than I am yeah she means we have our education entirely under the martial law so and inevitably the topic we started to talk about different things you know people's life the topic come up immediately and all of us agree that it is about China from our generation's point it is about China and in fact you can see from that survey this gentleman did about that Taiwan identification or something yeah then you can see that 2013 there's only 1.1% of people who think they are Chinese whereas 1992 where it's about 3 or 4 years after the national law that's only about 23.2% at the end of that we accomplished this one it is historical events which is something that we would never dream of that would happen from our generation and it is historical also about a relationship between family and children that the children don't listen to their parents if they want to go ahead and do it they don't feel embarrassed we would think my parents would be so embarrassed my children went out to go to the street and do these sort of things so he is also a rebellion about family and children as well also the conclusion is the sunflower students they are a total new generation people of major generations they wouldn't understand that it's just a total new way of thinking a total new way so I would say for my generation it is about China and it is about the threat from China and the best things come out of this get together is that we think my generation is a luckier because we have got away with the war the second world war which my parents would have gone experienced and also luckier because we avoid the war with China which is the sunflower generation would be facing so I personally think our generation think it is about China let me answer this question very briefly although I was the one who analyzes who analyzes this China factor I have to emphasize that for many young people who participated in this movement China factor is not the only or not the most important factor that influenced their participation or involvement in this movement sometimes what we call generational injustice that the older generation owe the younger generation a lot because of various reasons is the most important motivation for them to get involved in this movement China factor is a background factor it is important but may not be the most important factor and another thing is that okay I am old but not that old but old enough because a lot of my friends after the sunflower movement called me or write FB or e-mail to me and say we know that you are heavily involved can we have a meeting those friends that haven't met me for 20 years they are not going to have a meeting okay let's say I don't want to go because there is very little overlapping between me and them I don't want to talk to them they are rich people rich people to be honest with you there is very little overlapping between my lifestyle and their lifestyle but I went anyway so eventually I understood why they want to talk to me because they don't understand their children who participated in this movement they want me to help them I understand they are children I was with their children on the street how can I help them eventually eventually the dinner ended with I quarreled with them because they really I really cannot help them what was going on they didn't change their mind as I totally agree with this lady there is a new context coming up new context from the new political generation a new political generation has been created by this movement but actually not only by this movement through the many multiple movements as we said in these recent years a new political generation has been growing a new political discourse has been born has been created so the older generation is really difficult for them to understand but I am not talking about all of them a lot of old people still come to the movement whatever support they think they can give still a lot like old granny or grandfather they cook something they offer things like this so that was also really touching but for some of the old generation not that old generation I think it has nothing to do with the old has to do with the political economic and social status many people so many activists to support the movement to sustain the movement for such a long time for 24 days it's okay all of us are what is lost and how many is possible so I mean this is I think it's fundamental it's a principle you have to do more organization so I think what you do in the future is I still believe we need a very strong civil society and we can't give up organize more people and encourage more people to engage with whatever kind of social organization this is the first point the second point is we did discuss we do still not discuss a lot about how to form a new progressive third political work and this will involve many we hope to involve more as well and we hope to involve more people to think about how can we participate how can we intervene in the in current political party politics so the way we do is actually before some problems with movements although we are very small we try to hold more like a workshop and consensus meetings and we believe this is the only way we can find more people they are willing to engage into all these kinds of activities to make change in current political system and another question this is my answer to the lady there another question is that mentioned that it seems to be we talk more about strategies and I will say that I see this process is for I think it's quite similar to the anti-nuclear anti-nuclear movement after the Fukushima disaster you see in Taiwanese society so many people start to self-educate themselves you see so many people they start to try to find what exactly is the what's the exact problem of nuclear power and what is exactly the impact of this kind of energy generation system and I think it's quite similar in Fumar there is free travel service that grows cross stress you can see many people it's hard to believe they work so hard trying to find what's the problem of this they can work so hard they won't in my university you see many students engineering we have an ocean study college they think it's like their first time they try to engage in an issue and their neighbor for media goods and also they have no interest in too much about how consistent this kind of trying to explore the whole political procedure I think it's we have I feel it's a new way people know you have to educate yourself and with your friends friends you don't know from the internet so and also during the movement you see we have that you in your you think we all have I think it was in 19th March 19th we don't democratize class in we start kind of press room and you find a student they just let all our speech and put on the website and also later we have for some I think some scholars from scholars from technology society from the neighborhood and industry they more than 1000 people industry and use the different you have this week so I think it's quite important maybe you can bus because although everyone said student movement but is it really it is a quite interesting mix of different interest group and lobbying so I think would you first define what's your definition of somehow yeah I'm afraid that after you have enough oh man I think it's very fashionable you will define a student you find it as a student movement among participants only I think on many occasions that actually not students are the majority even inside a Li Ba Yuan so I think it's quite legitimate to say that it's also legitimate to say that student alone is not going to support this occupation action because actually they got another help from NGOs from regular citizens but still nevertheless I think there's an important element here that in Taiwan's culture only students have the legitimacy to do something that is that all students seem to be soldiers above interest so what they do is it's like for the national interest so they are not selfish that's why they have the power to represent the whole society I think it's not so different from at that time you have to have a student ID in order to enter the area that is called and all it's also the same situation with a wild strawberry in 2008 but here I think the students are kind of more relaxed they allow other people to participate even less I think the recognized leadership so I would say that this is a student led movement and I would say that there's a new definition of student movement here in Taiwan with the wild with the small sunflower can we follow the order I'm afraid maybe after the two professors I can have nothing to say no as our report you may see there are so many different kind of persons involved these sunflower movements and then of course I think about this is not just only I think what the professor already explained the culture in Taiwan and then for me I do fear there are different kind of generation in this movement for example Xiaota mentioned about 85 years old the grandfather from mainland China and then I also make a lot of maybe whole little life they always insist Taiwan independent 20 or 80 even 90 90 years old the total Taiwanese for example Shi Ming and also I need to special mention you also can see there are so many many people they are homeless person or they are much in the person in this society actually they feel very happy during this kind of street protest because they find out so many people sleep on the street and then we can see them all around and sometime people will just ignore them but I really find out there is another kind of different place they feel like home and also another group is this is something related to the China factor because I fear China is one of the factor only but during this movement you can see a lot of actually in Taiwan we have more than 300,000 spouses from mainland China and then some of them actually do present in this movement but they just keep silent they afraid to speak out they afraid the participant will find out ah you are from China and then I always ask them why because they all can feel this kind of anti-Chinese this kind of phenomenon but they always mention to me they say actually we also like you against this kind of Taiwan government just like we also against the Chinese government sometime they just only didn't give them 100% freedom but we afraid to speak out but actually you need to know what we need to against is this kind of China capitals the large China capitals but sometimes they afraid to speak out during this kind of sunflower movement because they afraid they became the enemy of the Taiwanese so I think we really need to use another way to thinking about this social movement yeah ok Fran you would like to reply or should we take another couple questions you mean before or after? ok so I can say that she totally confused yeah I would say of course it's a social movement but ah I would say from my observation precisely I would say it's a youth movement supported by social movement group why did I say so you know because you know each time when I have the chance to be the speaker for example to conduct the so called open space discussion technique or to chair the deliberative democracy on the street I always starting with a survey you know could you tell me where we come from the south or north or you know we call the Wendian Ming or Zhao Dian Ming because it's a classroom right usually I will also do the age survey so from my you know limited experience I found that actually if you look at the demographic profile 80 percent of the participants they are under 30 of course we have the 85 years old or the 50 years old but actually the majority they are under 30 so actually they are the core of the mass so I would say it's a youth movement but supported in terms of the hard work most of the 80 percent of the hard work actually are done by the NGO you can imagine right yeah so ok the hard work but you know I think the media they only recognize the student movement and the student movement in terms of history or in terms of the image I think I don't know why they just have the privilege so you know sometimes you know when the NGO people are in the press conference but you look at the TV we say the student A student B but they are not students ok yeah but they might be the same age do you know what I mean yeah ok so so yeah so it's a pity that the social movement didn't really get the credit but I would say that's due to the well anyway the societies they give you know a high regard to the student and we didn't have the good chance to correct that but I would say actually it's a youth movement supported by the social movement ok yeah ok got two questions there oh yeah we'll get more and more but I know you've been waiting quite a long time then Mike was next I think she was just slightly ahead of you ok yes she all of you so I wonder what's your opinion since we have so many professors here can you show your heads up I would like to how can we I mean like it's their generation becoming a more vibrant simple society are we they basically they'll sell we'll take care of Mike just a few words yes and curiosity is that in the latest word in there's quite a long piece which says a British visitor just happened to be there and that was me anyway I want to say something about the the ASIS division I think there's tendency to and has been in the discussion to differentiate the old now my impression was there was an extraordinarily uniform age distribution and look at the numbers there's no 500,000 there they're not enough students to be more a smallish percentage and it was quite extraordinary that there would seem to be a very uniform distribution of social class age education as well and a certain enthusiasm which went across the whole culture and it was very exciting to be there so we've got a couple of ones there one is kind of challenging the youth centered argument and one on democracy and populism yeah I was saying about populism I think populism only happened in the society where the society was active when the people are the kind of used to be mobilized they don't have really critical knowledge, critical debates critical culture and so I think this is more important things from my point of view in democratization or democratic consolidation in Taiwan now because we are facing a very critical moment which is the coming back which we thought should be changed a little bit after they're failing the regime for ADS but we found that after they come back the way they deal with the civil society the freedom of speech and actually is quite similar what they did 20 years ago even worse than that or they use the police and state force so I think this is quite critical moment the society now should use this opportunity to equip themselves to improve the kind of you know, different kind of knowledge and become active to ensure what we got in terms of democracy and of course for the next agenda would be you know relations with China or the social equality that kind of things but if we want to say something about the democracy or democratic consolidation I think a very important thing is to more active activate the different kind of different corners different areas of people to concern more about public issues so that there won't be no chance for the politicians in the future if they are smart enough try to be publicist so I think this is quite tricky things because the basic knowledge is that if there is a passive society it will be easy to become publicist but if we have been active around different corners different class, different communities I think we can evolve the kind of possibilities I just want to echo Professor Cho's sentiment I am political scientist by training and the reason why I started I started monitoring the social movements in Taiwan is because I was interested in the consolidation process of democracy of Taiwan and then the quality of democracy of Taiwan and so if you look at if you examine the literature within the democratic consolidation there is I do believe that Taiwan is still in the process of consolidating its democracy because if you look at consolidation literature within political science there are a few criteria that you will see not only that rule of law has to be respected and there is a general sense within society that the society operates as a democracy and also there is two more important factor is that you need an active and vibrant civil society and individuals who are in sync in definition of social and political rights and you see that in Taiwan right now and then you see the student movement kind of channeling a lot of us mentioned the 30 seconds passage of the agreement and I see that one of the key things is that there is that bottom line that will activate civil society including the students to participate in such a movement so for me looking at the sunflower movement I was not too worried about the student movement the whole movement in general turning into populism just a bunch of individual being activated just because there is a charismatic leader tell them to do something so that's pretty much my opinion when it comes to democracy versus populism examining from the movement's angle the similarity between the similarity between democracy and populism is that a wide range of citizens or a huge amount of citizens participated in certain political event that's a similarity from judging from that you can see well this time a huge number of citizens are involved but what is the difference the difference is that whether these participating citizens are well informed or self educating or do they come from different walks different categories different sectors of the society if they are terribly similar they all have the same face there is you may have a legitimate doubt that this is very populist this time we have more than 100 NGOs and these NGOs as I said it's a miracle that they can come together usually they don't talk to each other but right now they come together for various reasons as I presented at least three different contexts they come together and during the process as finally presented we never stop educating ourselves as if it's never enough I have to tell you these students I don't know where they got this spirit of learning they never show that in my class they study the service trade agreement better than anyone else I don't know where they get this energy from sometimes they ask me questions that I really cannot answer I have to say I'm really embarrassed by them I have to say particularly the young generations somehow I see the energy I don't know where the energy comes from self-educating self-motivated so definitely that's not populist very briefly another thing is speaking of educating another fascinating thing that one saw especially on Jinan road is you had all these little libraries that emerged during the occupation it was fascinating to see Yongtae when he's reading Edward Said reading George Orwell Chinese translation original English again, as you said there's this willingness to learn not just cross-strait services trade agreement or Taiwanese history but also modes of thought from outside there's a reason why a lot of young Taiwanese were reading 1984 and it's fascinating there's this willingness to learn again they're not reading manga they're reading Orwell they're reading Fu Po because I want to invite some students down there because I know here is also like event here in London like a protest or something and it's more than 500 people she told me before it's like 700 people and I do want to know more about what happened here around the sunflower movement period anywhere explain my t-shirt more than B which a lot of professors have talked about this term based on the cross-strait agreement we have a group booking and ship the t-shirts from Taiwan to the UK which is very exciting I don't really know what I supposed to talk today because I'm not prepared about the experience of I mean what motivated you to start doing all those organizing things are you guys asking questions? I'll give an introduction about what we have done there it's a very good place to take pictures so what we have done on March 30 is that the day was an overseas protest there are more than 17 countries up to 49 cities Taiwanese students who are now studying in those places trying to get together to have an overseas huge protest and we are me myself and my two friends down there were one of the organizers of the protest in London and on March 30 I think two professors have shown the pictures in Taiwan we are very surprised to know that Taiwan decided to have a protest on that day too because actually we have the idea first before them which is very interesting because when we are trying to get more supporters from overseas and the last country who joined this protest is Taiwan I think we have to I personally really want to make this idea clear because we don't want of course we are supporting Taiwan but the story is like that and what we have done is we had a huge protest at Trafalgar Square and there were more than 700 before supporting us I firstly have to admit that that was my first time like practically attend in a social movement or in a protest because I would like to respond to you because actually my hometown is Ping Tung and Ping Tung University of Education is just right next to my house and when you were showing the pictures of the stories in southern Taiwan I was quite touched to be honest because it's very rare to see like Taiwan people all over the country finally devoted themselves in at least one social issue so I was quite touched and also I was pretty touched to see there are numerous like hundreds and hundreds of people attending the protest in the UK and I got lots of feedback also questions one of the most important questions is that why are you Taiwanese people overseas doing this outside your country what can you contribute and to be honest I have no answer to that that's the question I want to ask too to one of you what can we do overseas what Taiwanese people overseas can contribute to our own country to our homeland because as lots of people have mentioned we have to have translation in different languages to try to get more like international media's attention and that's what we want to do too we contact with lots of local media and try to get more exposure but apart from that what can we actually do like now we are sitting here discussing this social issue in London but what actually can we get from you or what can we contribute that's my question I think you've learned from last two and a half pages the Korean social movement scene the big factor is return students so I would underestimate the and the fact that for example that Taiwanese government is so concerned about some of these overseas student movements I don't know if anyone else wanted to pull up but apart from before that maybe you wanted to say a little bit about June 28 yeah yeah yeah thanks for doing this opportunity here it would be very beneficial for us actually after the protest March 30 lots of students not just students like overseas Taiwanese people in Japan, in Germany we are again organizing lots of following activities and in terms of London we are going to have a conference like this today on 20th of June and we have already invited lots of speakers and one, yeah, Zafi fell yes he's coming too it's our honor and also Huang Guo Chang he's coming to London on 28th of June and he's going to give a speech and also a professor from LSE, Arthur Husson I don't know if you know him and a professor from Taiwan University Wu Tongming is going to have a talk about economics and cross-strait agreement so we would like to invite you to come again because I think it would be very meaningful and also not only Taiwanese students here are doing something we have a Hong Kongese students organizing a protest too as I guess because there are so many things happening in Hong Kong first the Chinese government issued a white paper about the position of Hong Kong that's the they claim over the control of Hong Kong and at the same time in the internal level in the domestic level of Hong Kong the Hong Kong government and the developers to effect lots of people in the Northeast Hong Kong in order to do those luxury apartments and last week there was a huge protest outside the Legislative Council and this week because the government is asking for budget and they would go again in the Legislative Council and nowadays the Legislative Council is already putting all those to protest so on the coming Saturday 2pm outside Tate Modern we will have a sit-in and the title of sit-in is Technical 4am which is inspired by I mean or should we take a final couple of questions we've got one, two, three okay, oh well, we've got about five questions we're glad to maybe we should take them more as comments perhaps than a question oh yeah, I keep them fairly short, okay, go ahead Right, just a quick question I am an active citizen from Hong Kong so after the sharing I've seen similarities between the situation in Hong Kong and Taiwan especially when you mention about the social movements especially the samplar I would compare the samplar movement with the anti-national education movement happening in Hong Kong which also end results after a series of social movements for example the demolition of the Prince Pier the destruction of the village due to the recent, due to the development of the express railway in Hong Kong so my question is since we're sharing these similarities and we also have a new generation new political generation we have social movements led by young youth groups for example, scholarism and we might have an occupation movement called Occupy Central in Hong Kong, it might or might not happen I don't know it may be endified by the China Factor or the White Paper currently occurred and we also have the Northeast Development as mentioned by the gentlemen so for you guys we are actually panicking as Hong Kongers, we are worrying do you have any advice for us we do not have we do not have a sea we don't have a border we don't even have an army and we are already a part of China the Chinese Factor is probably the most worrying biggest factor in our city so in that case in the future context, what's coming next for the success of social movement and fighting for social justice what's your suggestion let's take the other one you have a problem in regards to the West of the situation in Taiwan I was wondering could it be like they talk a lot about what's happening in Syria because they have the best of interest in wanting to change the regime but they don't talk about that great because they want to keep the status quo could it be that they actually what is America's opinion do they just want to keep the status quo because it's peaceful and they want to have a good relationship between Taiwan and China they don't want to rock the boat how do they feel where does America stand I just want to ask what would you say to Chinese people if you meet them about this movement because there is actually an occasion next one day at UCL there's a China-Taiwan cross-strait debate and I know about this event because I joined an interview in my department at UCL and there's an interview for new lecturers and this was a Chinese contest presenting research in diaspora literature and when he left when she left that podium we PhD students as audience are asked about our opinions and I say maybe I'm tired when she was presenting there's always a question in my mind why is China's diaspora and next to me was Dr Vivian Luo she is the director of Chinese health and humanity and she invited me to talk about the movement to Chinese students her Chinese students and I think that's very important that we have better communication with Chinese students because they are not necessarily charged with this governmental ideology and so maybe at this occasion I just want to invite you to if you are interested and I'm also aware that maybe we need to be very careful in our wording and have good communication skills and the big question is what would you say to Chinese students is that directly in response? I'm working on this on Monday it's coming Monday we've actually addressed the question we've been having real difficulties I don't know when you would be interested in coming that would be really wonderful and then we would have more information and Chi-Man, you're going to have the last question I just want to have the Hong Kong questions because actually I'm half Taiwanese half Hong Kong so I have many mixed feelings I was very glad that I could join the conference each day and I listened to your wonderful presentation and I remember when we are having lunch together today we're talking about maybe the PRC is doing the great thing they do is wishing more at least as Hong Kong people together for me I was a bit touching because when I see what happened in Taiwan actually many Hong Kong young people actually they very supported and managed journalists and actually they they should be like didn't have many emotions but behind the scenes we talk about that everyone is saying that we are so happy to see something happening in Taiwan and in Hong Kong because and then recently Hong Kong happened so many things and then we are very worried about it but at the same time actually I feel very touched because actually before I didn't really feel like many Taiwanese Taiwanese every year I didn't really feel like Taiwanese people really concerned about the situation in Hong Kong that much and then recently and then I can see many support from Facebook and then it is very touched and then I think two places get closer and closer together I mean I've been to so many Taiwan conferences over the last decade so this is probably the one conference where there's come up more than ever which I think the links are becoming much much closer I think it's a really interesting but I just my question actually is do you think other than what Hong Kong can do it's like because we I think the same is Hong Kong people actually feeling that it's the same as Taiwanese people it's like Taiwan is not working so actually it's not working they are going to pro-tax like Occupy Central and then I think many things it's the only things we can do because actually in a situation really bad versus Taiwanese because we don't have democracy and then we can't vote so the only thing is we can do is like strict pro-tax or to become more violence I see violence is not a bad burden but it's like is it the only thing we can do and on that point then I think we're going to have to to finish let me just I think we should thank the panel I think we'd like to thank all you for your contributions