A Century of Student Movements: The Making of Taiwan's Democracy

Ming-sho Ho (Sociology, National Taiwan University)
Taiwan's vibrant democracy nowadays defied the geopolitical challenges imposed by a century of Japanese colonialism, cold-war anti-communist dictatorship, and China's irredentism. This lecture will analyze the island nation's pursuit of autonomy and democracy, with special attention to the role of student mobilization. "Student" was a category created in the colonial modernization, as the Japanese modernized the educational structure and expanded the youthful population receptive to political radicalism. After the flourishing of anti-colonial struggles in the 1920s, the postwar Chinese Nationalist regime encountered student mobilization in the 1947 February 28 Incident and the subsequent clandestine insurgency. The early-1970s witnessed the rise of the nationalistic Diaoyutai movement and its spillover to prodemocracy and social service streams. The lifting of martial law in 1987 gave a mighty impetus to the student movement, culminating in the 1990 Wild Lily Movement. After a long hibernation, the student movement made a comeback in the 2008 Wild Strawberry Movement and the 2014 Sunflower Movement, with the protest target shifting to China. His lecture will review the century-long student movement history and examine its changing ideologies, strategies, and impacts.
Faculty host: Eli Friedman (Sociology, Department of Comparative International Labor Relations, Cornell)
Co-sponsored by The Levinson China & Asia-Pacific Studies Program