Documenting Environmental Protest

In the wake of Taiwan’s lifting of martial law on July 15, 1987, documentary films on a wide variety of subjects have become a popular medium for the expression of political dissent; for the raising of public consciousness with reference to such topics as gender equality, authoritarian repression, the humane treatment of animals, the status of minority groups, and the role of elderly people in society; and for the exposure of environmental damage due to industrialization. ¹ As the editors of this volume outline in greater detail in the Introduction, 1987 was a watershed date for Taiwan, politically speaking, because from then on, the formation of political parties could take place legally, dissenting political opinion was no longer considered a threat to national security, and detaining, jailing, or “disappearing” people solely on the grounds of their political beliefs ceased to be legal. That said, the date is, from another perspective, somewhat of an arbitrary one. As Denny Roy, Shelley Rigger, Mab Huang, and others have shown, for example, dissenting opinion has long been a part of Taiwan’s political and social fabric. ² Since the time of the traumatic “birth” of the Republic of China on Taiwan in the late 1940s, and especially with the massacre that occurred beginning with the February 28 Incident in 1947, effectively paving the way for authoritarian rule, the public expression of dissenting political opinion has enjoyed a tenuous, if stubbornly persistent, existence on the island. But from the late 1940s until 1987, referred to as the “White Terror” era, those who expressed political dissent were subject to extreme persecution. A main component of Taiwan’s modern history is the record of political activists, mainly intellectuals, who have sought to challenge the government on a wide range of grounds, only ultimately to be subdued or liquidated. This chapter explores the topic of nuclear power in Taiwan as it is featured in the Taiwanese documentary Gongliao, How Are You? (Gongliao, ni hao ma?). This film, taking a hybrid approach that mixes some techniques from anthropological or ethnographic cinema and some from political documentary, could not have been produced in Taiwan prior to 1987. Nonetheless, the anti-nuclear movement and environmental consciousness in general, though perhaps slightly ancillary to the ethnic tensions that have informed the political dissent–repression bipolarity in recent Taiwan history, were predicated on the gradual gains made by the persistent tug from the opposition that has existed since the late 1940s and finally came to ultimate fruition in 1987. ³ In addition, the fact that attitudes toward nuclear power globally are ambivalent and fluid has meant that its status in Taiwan has been, and continues to be, subject to revision on a regular basis. Indeed, at the outset of writing this chapter, nuclear power was generally viewed as an inevitable and necessary hazard in Taiwan. Under the shadow of the recent disaster involving the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, however, the Taiwanese are highly apprehensive about their own Faustian bargain with nuclear power.