Which is best: One big protest followed by a return to
normal, or a series of smaller ones that keep the issues alive?
Several thousand protesters opposing forced evictions and
demolitions were at it again on Sunday evening with a mass rally in front of
the Presidential Office, followed by a raid on the Ministry of the Interior,
which about 2,000 protesters occupied for well over 12 hours.
Barricades on Ketagalan Blvd |
The crowd cheers in support on 818 |
As things wrapped up a little after 9:30pm, Frida Tsai (蔡培慧),
the Taiwan Rural Front spokeswoman, announced that the protest was to continue
with a raid on — and egging of — the Executive Yuan, which had already been the
victim of an “attack” last Thursday.
A member of the Zhang family |
A fellow journalist accosted me and said he’d heard there
was a “plan a” and a “plan b.” According to him, “plan a” was the EY, while
“plan b” was the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), which we were just about to
pass by. “There’s tons of police in front of the EY,” he said, “but nobody at
the MOI.”
Stickers affixed to the back door at the MOI |
Artists spray graffiti by the main gate |
The protesters occupied the building until mid-day on Monday
and promised to return if their demands were not met. Later that day, the
Taiwan Rural Front filed a lawsuit against Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻)
for corruption in various land deals.
I can already hear it, as I’ve heard it many times before:
This is all good, Michael, but a few thousand people isn’t enough to convince
the government to mend its ways; what Taiwan needs is mobilization of the type
and scale seen in Egypt, or Tunisia, or Syria. Otherwise, the protesters will
simply be ignored.
There are several problems with that argument. The first,
most obvious one is the fact that none of the countries with which Taiwan is
being compared are functional democracies. Without democratic outlets, the
public is likelier to resort to more “extreme” measures to voice its discontent
with the authorities or seek to unseat the government altogether.
Two other and related important factors are the size of the
15-24 age population — a key variable in political instability — and levels of
unemployment. A quick look at those categories helps explain why sustained
protest campaigns in Taiwan have not achieved mobilization rates anywhere near
as in the other three countries. According to the CIA World Factbook, people in
the 15-24 age group represent: Egypt (18%); Tunisia (16.5%); Syria (20.8%) and
Taiwan (14.3%) of the total population. The median age in those countries is
24.8, 31, 22.7 and 38.7 respectively. Already, we can see that Taiwan has fewer
young people as a share of total population available to fuel the ranks of
protests.
Here’s where it gets really interesting. Unemployment within
the same age bracket is as follows: Egypt (24.8%, or 2.79 million); Tunisia
(30.7%, or 553,500); Syria (19.2%, or 883,200); Taiwan (4.2%, or 130,000). In
other words, Taiwan has fewer young people as a percentage of the population,
and most of them are either employed or, given their country’s advanced economy,
obtaining an advanced education. It should not be surprising, then, that the
number of young Taiwanese taking to the streets is much lower than elsewhere,
not because they don’t care about the issues or aren’t making a difference in
other ways (e.g., helping with Web sites, short films, art work, &c), but
because they have a job, or class, or oftentimes both.
Moreover, beyond the behind-the-scenes work referenced
above, we must also consider whether large numbers of protesters showing up at
a rally are sufficient, in and of themselves, to count as a successful means of
pressuring the government. How often in the post-authoritarian era have large
protests — say, those assembling 200,000 or more protesters — succeeded in
forcing the government’s hand? Since the KMT regained power in 2008, the
opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has held a number of such
protests, the most recent one being the “Fury” (火大)
in January 2013. Time and again, such protests have been held, only for the
government to ignore them altogether and continue with what it was doing. Those
were one-shot public expressions; people were bussed to Taipei, they waved
flags and placards, shouted slogans, and went back home the same evening.
Contrast this with the recent wave of protests over Dapu or
the several other issues over which today’s youth, supported by academics and
other groups, have mobilized. Though a much smaller number of participants are
involved, the protests and guerrilla-style flash rallies, music, videos, and a
very original use of visual arts, have managed to keep the issues alive over
several months by ensuring that they continue to be the subject of debate on TV
talk shows and in newspapers. How long did people continue talking about “Fury”
after the streets were cleaned?
Ultimately, protests are a battle for hearts and minds, a
competition for public opinion waged between those in power and those who
aren’t. Large protests are rarely a spontaneous outburst and instead build-up
over time until a certain line is crossed (e.g., the protest group wins the
battle for hearts and minds), or people lose complete faith in the system and
decide to overturn it. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 didn’t happen overnight,
nor did it initially involve a large segment of Iranian society, however
unhappy they were under the Shah’s repressive regime. This, in fact, partly explains why the CIA was caught unprepared when the revolution occurred. I would bet that the
Jasmine Revolution was also preceded by much smaller and more localized
protests that didn’t generate interest abroad. We only know of the larger,
destructive ones, but that’s a direct result of the nature of today’s
international media.
It’s still far too early to predict that the current
movement in Taiwan will manage to effect radical, or structural, change; but it
is equally much too early to discount it as a possible instrument for durable
change. (All photos by the author)
NEW! A Chinese version of this article is available here.
NEW! A Chinese version of this article is available here.
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