Meichun Lee
An iPad, fixed by a pair of slippers on the second floor of the Legislative Yuan (the congress of Taiwan), was shooting down the chamber with its lens. On the screen of the iPad, a big banner reading “Occupy 500 Hours” covered the bottom of the portrait of Sun Yat-Sen, the national father of Republic of China, otherwise known as Taiwan, hanging high on the wall. Two entrances next to the rostrum were blocked by piles of chairs. Inside, some occupants were discussing in groups; some were fighting hard with their lunchboxes; still others, holding cameras before their eyes, were capturing images as they were being captured by the iPad. The red light on the left-top corner had been running for 500 hours. Since the very beginning of the occupation, the images of the congress had been broadcasted non-stop online by the occupants themselves.
Down on the first floor, more cameras, tablets, mobile phones and CCTVs were operating at almost every corner of the congress. Outside, SNG cars of major TV channels stretched out their huge electronic plates while work stations of civic journalists equipped with free and speedy Wi-Fi systems were strategically located in the occupied site. Inside and outside, it was a real-life version of The Truman Show, a miniature of the surveillance society, only in its extreme sense. Open and transparent, the core concept and the goal of the movement, had been embodied in its own nature.
The scene took place in Taipei, Taiwan when the Sunflower Movement occupied the congress and its surrounding streets in the spring of 2014 to protest against the pass of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement between Taiwan and China. The agreement was mocked by the Taiwanese as a “black-box agreement” since the procedure of negotiation and formulation were mostly made under the table regardless of the fact that it would influence tens of thousands of Taiwanese lives. “Anti-black box” was the most effective incentive of the movement, even more powerful than anti-trade pact, anti-government or anti-China in winning over support. A belief that the resistance to the “black-box” agreement can protect the democracy of Taiwan became so strong that open and transparent seemed to be the only remedy to cure Taiwan’s critically ill democracy.
Open and transparent was the idea that motivated young generations in Taiwan to participate in this movement. While the term “politics” had long been corrupted as a political game, the power struggle, or fights among the legislators, open and transparent was believed to be capable of “purifying” the politics and bringing it back to the foundation of equality and justice. Even more, open and transparent was the ideological weapon the people wielded against China. For many Taiwanese, China was seen as the largest threat to democracy—no freedom of speech, no open dissent, and guanxi (the personalized networks) overpowered the law. The people on the islands feared that, with its strong economic power, China would erode Taiwan’s democracy and freedom, which the people have struggled for decades to acquire. Indeed, China, not merely as a threat, was also a mirror that reflected the resistance of the Taiwanese to the era of martial law, which only ended three decades ago. The images of the supposed-to-be enemies, the KMT party in Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party, ironically overlapped.
Embodied with the spirit of open and transparent, the occupation was destined to be exposed to the gaze of the public. Stories about drinking beer in the chamber or consuming sweets from a legislator’s office were reported by the mainstream media to show the irresponsibility and thoughtlessness of the movement while recycling and maintaining the cleanliness of the chamber became signs that the occupation was carried out by rational and responsible citizens. How to legitimize resistance in front of cameras became the critical issue. “We are not rioters, we do this out of right intention“ was the message the occupants tried to convey. The paradox thus lay at what it meant to behave well. While the occupation was to transgress the social norm, why should the occupants still behave according to the norm? One of the student leaders expressed after the movement that “prisoned in the congress, I was like an actor in those days”. Yes, acting, like The Truman Show. There was no way to escape surveillance, and one had better act in consistent with the expectation of the public in order to gain support and sympathy.
The movement was both accomplished and ruined by open and transparent. Its pursuit of transparency helped to win support from half a million Taiwanese who appeared around the congress in the massive rally on March 30th. The main slogan, “legislating the regulation before reviewing the trade pact” (xian-li-fa hou-shen-cha), aimed to make the political and economic interactions between Taiwan and China transparent under a monitoring mechanism. Such a demand was in the end accepted by the speaker of the congress. On the other hand, the omnipresent gaze from the public and the occupants themselves put great pressure on the occupation so that any radical resistance was handicapped. Even though there emerged dissenting voices, such as the critiques of global capitalism or Taiwan independence, the movement was compromised to the mildest demand of legislating a monitoring mechanism.
Whatever achieved or failed, with the encouragement of the Sunflower Movement, the pursuit of transparency in politics has continued in Taiwan. The aim to transform the representative democracy to an open and participatory one won its first victory in the election of the mayor of Taipei at the end of 2014. A non-partisan, a new face in politics, Ko Wen-Je, was elected for his proposal of “open government, civic participation, open and transparent.” This was a new page in Taiwan’s political history. With the promise and the illusion of transparency, what will the future of Taiwan look like? I would rather be optimistic while hearing so many young Taiwanese expressed as the occupation ended: “What remained unaccomplished will be our duty.”
Meichun Lee is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Her work focuses on the political potentiality of digital images and technology in Taiwan.