ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits the Sunflower Movement, which emerged at the end of the Ma Ying-jiu era and epitomized the resistance of much of Taiwan’s vibrant civil society against the KMT’s high-handedness in pushing for cross-Strait integration. The driving force behind the social activism during Ma’s second term in office was the ‘China factor’, that is, the rising impact of China on Taiwan’s political and social fabric that was so wilfully embraced by the Ma administration. Numerous new civil society organisations were set up to counter Ma’s policies. The ruling party’s attempt to railroad the Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement (CSTSA) through the Legislative Yuan in March 2014 served as a catalyst to trigger a large-scale protest movement that wrought significant changes in Taiwan’s political landscape. Ma was forced to backtrack on the CSTSA and to use legislative procedures to ensure better legislative oversight of cross-Strait agreements, although he remained committed to his course of increasing integration across the Taiwan Strait. Ho concludes that, with hindsight, the Ma Ying-jiu era could be called Taiwan’s ‘revolutionary sixties’, an era of rising movement activism and youth participation nurtured by government policies which, arguably, increasingly failed to resonate with broad sections of Taiwanese society.
