Andy S. Chang
On 3 November 2008, a Chinese envoy from the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), Chen Yunlin, arrived in Taiwan to negotiate trade pacts in what was widely hailed by the local press as a milestone meeting between Taipei and Beijing after over half a century of political rivalry. But while the Nationalist ruling elites reveled in a historic thaw of cross-strait relations, Chen’s five-day visit had been marred by a wave of anti-China protests that culminated in the worst incidents of violence between police and protestors in a decade. This was quickly accompanied by an unusually vocal condemnation by the Ma Ying-jeou administration, asserting that if the protestors ‘cannot act peacefully and rationally, the country ceases to be democratic’ and that maintaining public order against social disturbances was a compelling state objective (China Times 07/11/08).
It was in this climate of heightening tensions, reinforced by societal fears of a curtailment of civil liberties—following documented cases of arbitrary arrests and mistreatment of civilians, confiscation of Taiwanese and Tibetan flags, forced entry and shutdown of commercial property —that professors and students responded to the political crisis that surfaced, staging a sit-in on 6 November to call for the revision of the Parade and Assembly Law. Since then, the sit-in has grown into a social movement, dubbed the ‘Wild Strawberry Student Movement,’ which has mustered nationwide as well as overseas student support while elevating the issue of free speech to the emerging public discourse. The growing divide in state-society relations since the coming of power of President Ma and Premier Liu Chao-hsuan, along with a deepening distrust of elite-led normalisation of relations with China, has also been highlighted by the confluence of disruptive protests and demonstrations across the island (BBC 04/11/08).
In this essay, I employ a political process framework to explain the Wild Strawberry Movement’s development and propose ways by which student activists can better sustain collective action and ultimately bring about a change in government policy. I argue that the movement has emerged and persisted, in spite of contracting political opportunities, because of the mobilising structures and interpretative frames that the professors and students were able to cobble together in short order. Its organisational progress notwithstanding, the movement’s success in altering the opportunity structure in its favour will depend critically on its ability to align and amplify existing frames with broader segments of society. In the analysis of movement development, I focus on the injustice, identity, and agency components of strategic framing that Gamson (1992) has contended to be crucial to social mobilisation.
Emergence of the Wild Strawberry Movement
Both the student movement and the opposition-led demonstrations that immediately preceded it had emerged in a climate of declining political opportunities. The police’s heavy-handed tactics against protestors, as well as the government’s extensive mobilisation of riot police to stifle public displays of dissent, had stoked the resentment of significant segments of society, including the student movement. But far from repressing them, the ROC’s deployment of the instruments of coercion conjured up memories of the country’s authoritarian past and galvanised activists to further disruptive action (Taipei Times 04/11/08). On 5 November, Chen was stranded in a hotel by a 1,000-strong contingent of anti-China protestors, but police repression continued unabated as images of scuffles on the street and police closure of a record store were aired around the clock on local media outlets. The fighting that ensued the following day led to a nearly universal condemnation of the protestors by both the authorities and the Chinese-language media. The student protest that formed in the wake of this series of incidents was thus overshadowed by the negative press reaction, being forced to defend the legitimacy of its demands as it sought to distance itself from affiliation with political parties.
Faced with a less than favourable opportunity structure, the Wild Strawberry movement arose and gathered steam despite the police dispersal of 500 activists on 7 November. How did this movement emerge amid a restrictive opportunity structure, confounding the standard prediction of the political opportunity thesis? The movement’s formation, I argue, can be explained in part by reference to the social networks that linked activists across university campuses in northern Taiwan. While it is difficult to ascertain the precise makeup of student activists, a preliminary examination suggests that participants were initially drawn from university sociology departments and medical schools in Taipei, with Taiwan University’s professors and students as some of the major organisers of the 6 November sit-in . A second facilitating factor relates to the notion of consensus mobilisation emphasised in the literature on cultural framing. These inchoate mobilising structures had been able to secure a significant turnout at protest events because of the interplay between injustice, identity, and agency frames that motivated students to launch a movement of contention.
According to Gamson (1992), the injustice claim refers to the moral indignation over an unjust situation that is laden with emotion. The identity dimension, on the other hand, concerns the process of constructing a collective ‘us’ defined in opposition to some ‘them’ who are held responsible for an unjust situation. Finally, a sense of agency provides a direct incentive for activism by motivating individuals to believe that it is possible to alter situations through collective action. In other words, agency empowers individuals into thinking that they are ‘potential agents of their own history’ (7). All these features of framing were present in the activation of latent protest networks rooted in the university setting. The framing of injustice against what the activists perceived as ‘excessive police coercion’ and the ‘authoritarian retrogression’ pushed otherwise atomised individuals to direct action. With the construction of grievances, the activists also mobilised along identity and agency lines. The movement’s collective attribution was made clear from the outset: the issue was framed in terms of ‘the state’ against ‘the people,’ and the upper echelons of the state hierarchy identified as the target of the protest. The feeling of us against them was particularly salient in the verbal confrontation between students and Hsueh Hsiang-chuan, the Executive Yuan’s Secretary-General, over the legitimacy of the police handling of protests. This growing sense of identity was in part shaped by collective memories of student activism in the nation’s transition to democracy. The legacy of student involvement in public affairs as epitomised by the March 1990 Wild Lily Student Movement and Action 100 Alliance, which conduced to the holding of Taiwan’s founding elections and the abolition of the Sedition Act in 1992, instilled a sense of efficacy in Taiwanese students and provided a contentious repertoire from which to base their political claims.
The mobilising structures and interpretative frames that were organised by professors and students, coupled with the nation’s history of student activism, can in large part explain the formation of the Wild Strawberry movement at a time when political opportunities were far from conducive. I now outline the movement’s prospects for survival, and suggest ways for the successful attainment of the goals it had set out.
Prospects for Movement Success
1) Thou Shalt Align Thy Frames with Society
Many Taiwanese remain unclear, if not confused, as to the goals of the movement. The movement’s frames, while successful in the initial phases, do not seem to have struck a responsive chord with broader segments of society. At a minimum, the movement needs to frame its demands more strategically towards mass society if it wishes to step up the pressure on political elites for change.
2) Thou Shalt Amplify Thy Frames
Part of the reason for the movement’s failure at frame alignment stems from the activists’ denial of the opposition-led protests. The separation of the students’ beliefs from those of the earlier protests obscures the force of the Wild Strawberries’ claims of police oppression. The students have in recent days joined in the public denunciation of violence by previous protestors, but at the expense of gravely weakening the legitimacy of their proclaimed opposition to ‘state violence.’ It is imperative to construct a stronger civil society narrative to amplify the connection between the numerous instances of civilian protests against Chen Yunlin, including the confrontational ones, with the root of their problems: the extraordinary governmental display of force and restriction on individuals’ expression of alternative views throughout the entire ARATS visit. This may require underscoring the injustice（不公不義）components of existing frames so as to shift the public’s attention back to the notion of ‘excessive police coercion’ and thereby enhance the emotional appeal of the students’ demands.
3) Befriend Thyself With Allies, and Expand Thy Mobilising Structures
In its quest to sever what it calls ‘political ties’ and project an anti-political stance, the student movement has consistently denied participation by bystanders and sympathisers. A visible barrier has been maintained between students (us) and the sympathetic crowd (them) at Freedom Square, fostering the impression that bystanders greatly outnumber the movement participants, whose number continues to dwindle day after day. The movement also eschews strategic alliances with liberal civil society organisations for fear of being labeled ‘green,’ without realising that the inclusion of like-minded civic groups is essential to the students’ formulation of a legitimate civil society discourse against the state. A united front of student, professor, journalist, labour, feminist, religious (Falun Gong, Presbyterian Church), ethno-nationalist (Tibetan, Aboriginal, Hakka, Hoklo, Mainlander), grassroots party organisation, environmental and human rights activists is important not only because they provide crucial sources of manpower, expertise and mobilising networks; they are also central to the substance of students’ emergent civil society framing. Perhaps the most effective way to diffuse criticisms leveled on the activists is to move beyond the elites’ bipartisanship and project claims as independent citizens of a democratic polity.
4) Exploit Thy Political Opportunities
An elite split in the KMT between hardliners (Premier Liu Chao-hsuan and anti-Taiwan-independence legislators) and moderates (President Ma Ying-jeou, Wang Jin-ping, and pro-localisation politicians) seems to have emerged from the latest wave of police mobilisation, street protests, and countermovement. Ma has moderated his stance since the events of 6 November, agreeing in principle that the Parade and Assembly Law needs to be revised. Meanwhile, several KMT legislators elected at the grassroots have also questioned the administration’s silencing of dissent for the benefit of the ARATS negotiations, citing police brutality as responsible for the confrontations that followed. The growing fissures between hardliners and softliners may facilitate the Wild Strawberries’ framing competition with the state, but ultimately success will depend on how the movement exploits these divisions and tilts the balance towards the KMT moderates in the upcoming legislative sessions.
Conclusion
I have argued that the Wild Strawberry Student Movement arose not in response to
expanding political opportunities, but because of the strong grievances and the university-based networks that the participants had amassed. While these initial supporting structures and cultural meanings mustered a significant student turnout during the earlier protest stages, the movement’s success in changing government policy will be contingent on how it frames its issues and mobilises supporters. Frame alignment and amplification, expansion of mobilising structures, and seizure of political opportunities will be among some of the major tasks for the Wild Strawberries at this critical juncture.
REFERENCES
Books and Articles
Gamson, William A. 1992. Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, eds. 1996. Comparative Perspectives on
Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tarrow, Sidney. 1994. Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zhao, Dingxin. 1998. ‘Ecologies of Social Movements: Student Mobilization during the 1989
Pro-democracy Movement in Beijing.’ American Journal of Sociology 103, pp.1493-1529.
Newspapers
Al Jazeera English. 2008. ‘Protests mar China-Taiwan meeting.’ 6 November
BBC News. 2008. ‘Distrust amid China-Taiwan deal.’ 4 November.
BBC Chinese. 2008. ‘Ma Yingjiu hui Chen Yunlin, Minjindang jilie kangyi.’ 6 November.
BBC Chinese. 2008. ‘Wutian de zuida gongyueshu.’ 6 November.
BBC News. 2008.‘Clashes mar Chinese Taiwan visit.’ 7 November.
China Times. 2008. ‘Chen Yunlin wei’an dongyuan renci jiang puo wan.’ 3 November.
China Times. 2008. ‘Ma paizhuo: Cai Yingwen beinuo, bu fuzeren.’ 7 November.
Taipei Times. 2008. ‘Assembly law should be changed: Ma.’ 17 November.
Taipei Times. 2008. ‘DPP pans “excessive” police force.’ 6 November.
Taipei Times. 2008. ‘Protesters say measures recall the martial law era.’ 4 November.
