J. Michael Cole

Last spring the Taiwanese Parliament was occupied when a group of young men and women, who had been protesting the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) by the ruling party Kuomintang (KMT) party, surged over the fences. What came to be known as the Sunflower Movement focused global attention on what J. Michael Cole argues in his latest book, a collection of essays titled Black Island: Two Years of Activism in Taiwan, had been a growing movement of civil activism on the island.

Although things in Taiwan have largely returned to normal, Cole says the “genie is out of the bottle” with regard to civil activism in Taiwan. The Diplomat recently spoke to Cole about his book, the origins and future of civil activism in Taiwan, and how Taiwanese can simultaneously desire closer ties with Mainland China while also rejecting the notion of reunification.

The first section of your latest book Black Island: Two Years of Activism in Taiwan focuses on “The Long Road to 318...” Why do you think this section, which examines the roots of the Sunflower Movement, is so important to understanding civil activism in Taiwan?

I think it’s of the utmost importance because far too many Taiwan “experts” believed that the Sunflower Movement was spontaneous, while others saw it as occurring in a historical vacuum. The failure to see the road to the Sunflower events has in turn encouraged a number of “experts” to accuse the activists of being “undemocratic,” “irrational” and even “violent”—accusations that played right into the Ma Ying-jeou administration’s efforts to discredit the movement.

The section shows that all the legal ways of protesting—not only protesting, but also engaging politicians and using the court system when necessary—had been used in the lead-up to March 18, 2014, with little if any result in terms of policy correctives. In fact, rather than meet civil society halfway, the government cracked down and made it almost inevitable that society and the victims of government indifference would escalate. The other option, of course, was capitulation. But as I hope the first section makes clear, the young men and women who were part of the constellation of groups and NGOs that eventually coalesced into the Sunflower Movement had no intention to capitulate. They knew that lines had been crossed and that inaction could very well cost them their freedoms—their country, even.

So this first section is very important because I want to show that what happened in March last year was in reality very rational and perfectly acceptable as a means to keep powers in check between elections, which directly correlates with the quality of Taiwan’s democracy.

What’s the political atmosphere in Taiwan like post-Sunflower Movement? A year later, are things “back to normal” or has the movement had a lasting impact on how Taiwanese politicians do business?

For the time being, things are somewhat “back to normal,” at least if by normal you mean that the country isn’t rocked by protests as it was in the past two or three years. The reason it is so is simple: despite President Ma’s claims to the contrary, the Sunflower Movement has had a lasting effect on his administration’s ability to enact controversial policies, and the KMT knows that if it attempts to expedite anything as controversial as the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement (CSSTA) with China last year, or to do so by altogether bypassing democratic mechanisms, Taiwan’s youth will take action again. The leaders—and the new blood that the movements have recruited since—have made it clear that they will take action again if the government tries that kind of thing again. And to its credit, the Ma administration has not attempted that since and therefore has not provided incentives to civil society to take action on a large scale again.

So yes, it’s “business as usual,” with various civic groups and NGOs, currently lacking focus, going back to what they were doing prior to “318”—fighting among themselves. But that’s temporary; if the government does something bad, they will be back. The genie is out of the bottle. And as civil society remains unconvinced that opposition parties like the DPP have what it takes to counter government efforts and to properly govern the country should it prevail in the January 16, 2016, presidential election, they know that civil society might once again be called upon to correct the systemic problems that continue to haunt Taiwanese politics.

International media hasn’t been greatly interested in stories about Taiwan aside from defense and security stories regarding cross-straits relations. Why do you think these other stories—about values, identity, and civil society in Taiwan—are important?

Because this is where the seeds of a future reckoning in the Taiwan Strait are to be found. If you stick to the usual stories about Taiwan—many of which are not even datelined Taipei, by the way, as international media have been pulling out for reasons both financial and editorial—you’d think that unification is either inevitable or that everything is swell in the Strait. Society is where the real intelligence about the place can be gathered, and that’s true everywhere. You want to engage them if you’re to see the blows coming. Only if you tap into the “insider baseball” stories about Taiwan can you see the trend lines going in a direction that is almost opposite that which is claimed by the Ma administration, Beijing, and “experts” in places like Washington, D.C.

By paying closer attention to the values that inform Taiwanese identity, it’s also possible to understand why the majority of Taiwanese can be both in favor of closer ties with China while firmly being opposed to unifying with China—democratic or otherwise. If you ignore society—and sadly most “experts” tend to do so as it’s not “sexy” enough or it’s too complex—chances are that you will misread what Taiwanese identity is all about and misinterpret the rationale behind the kind of “drastic” action that was taken by the Sunflower Movement last year. I’m no genius, but by spending a lot of time with activists since 2012 and seeing how the authorities treated them, I had concluded long before “318” that something dramatic would happen. I even used the word “inevitable” sometime in 2013—more than once, I think.

You’ve mentioned before that the definition of what it means to be “Taiwanese” has broadened to focus on values rather than strictly ethnicity. What are the implications of Taiwan becoming a truly multicultural society?

The expression I use is “civic nationalism,” which implies that regardless of one’s ethnicity or ancestry, if you’re a willing participant in the experiment that is Taiwan, you’re Taiwanese. This idea has certainly been spreading among youth and includes a large number of first-, second- and third-generation “ethnic” Chinese (waishengren) who identify as Taiwanese.

The long-term implications of this phenomenon—and I’m convinced that this is the new baseline for identity in Taiwan—are extraordinary, as this will once and for all put an end to the hugely divisive “identity” politics that for far too long have kept Taiwan in a state of war with itself. Political parties will no longer be able to, or see advantages in, using the “ethnic” card. Instead, they will be compelled to identify the things that unite Taiwanese—and that’s to be found among the so-called swing and middle-of-the-road voters. A very telling sign of this is the ongoing efforts by some KMT members to remove the zhongguo from the name of their party. A united Taiwan that is sure-footed in how it defines itself and that doesn’t engage in exclusivism will be a much more formidable opponent to the Chinese government, which to date has greatly benefited from the longstanding divide in Taiwan. And above all, multiculturalism is a sign of maturity as a society, which allows variety to contribute to the whole to make it stronger, more nimble, and more resilient.

Taking a step back, what do you think Beijing thinks of the civil society developments in Taiwan? How might it change (or not) China’s strategy toward cross-strait relations?

There’s no doubt that if it wants to do so, Beijing has the access it needs to understand what’s going on within Taiwan’s civil society. Whether it is doing so, or has any interest in doing so, is a different question altogether. I sense that Beijing probably doesn’t want to find out too much about what’s going on at that level because it knows it won’t like what it sees and might be afraid that a similar “virus” might spread to China—it’s already happening in Hong Kong.

That said, it’s not impossible that Beijing would appreciate the challenges that civil society poses to the ruling party in Taiwan enough to realize that too much pressure on the authorities to adopt policies that are beneficial to Beijing could backfire. In other words, whether it likes it or not, Taiwan’s civil society—and its commitment to taking action when necessary—is now a variable, and an important one at that, in cross-strait relations. There is no doubt that civil society will force future governments to be more careful and accountable to the public, which consequently will make it more difficult for Beijing to extract “black box” concessions from Taipei.

But there are limits to this, and realizing that there is a new variable does not mean that the CCP will alter its ideology when it comes to “reunification.” President Xi Jinping’s remarks last year, to the effect that the “one country, two systems” formula is the only offer to Taiwan tells me that Beijing either doesn’t fully understand the depth and reach of civil society in Taiwan, or refuses to acknowledge its transformative effect. If Beijing understands the implications, it will understand that it will have to be more patient; if it doesn’t and presses ahead, the result will likely be a return to more contentious relations in the Taiwan Strait or greater instability within Taiwan.