What is the Sunflower Movement?

It is not always easy to pin down what the Sunflower Movement is, but broadly speaking, it refers to a series of protests that broke out in Taiwan in March, 2014. The activists consisted mainly of students and civic groups, and they protested the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA), a free trade agreement with China that many feared would harm the de facto independent status of Taiwan. What enraged Taiwanese youths most was that the ruling party Kuomintang (KMT) hastily passed the agreement through undemocratic procedures, without a transparent clause-by-clause review. The movement lasted 23 days, from March 18 to April 10, marking the first time in Taiwan’s history for the legislature to be occupied by citizens. People from all walks of lives participated in the movement, and it reached its climax on March 30, with more than 350,000 joining the rally outside the Presidential Office. Nonetheless, the movement was largely led by youths, so it has been frequently referred to and remembered as a student movement, thus making it the latest large-scale student movement in the island’s history, following its precedents such as the Wild Lily Movement and the Wild Strawberry Movement.
Although it is said that the passing of the CSSTA ignited the Sunflower Movement, there were a lot of different correlated factors at play beneath the surface. One of the factors is that the then president Ma Ying-jeou advocated for pro-China policies that would facilitate closer ties with China, and many young people were worried that the heavy economic reliance on China would enable Beijing to exert more political power over Taiwan, thus posing threats to the island’s sovereignty (President Ma had been criticized for “brown-nosing Beijing and selling out Taiwan”). Another thing is that the younger Taiwanese generation grow up believing that Taiwan is an independent nation, and as compared to the older generation, the majority of young people do not feel a sense of affinity with China whether culturally or geopolitically speaking. Together, these factors play an important role in fueling the movement and pointing towards the emergence of a distinct Taiwanese identity.

