Taiwan's Sunflower Movement follows 'Occupy' model

Want China Times, Yang Yi and Staff Reporter 2014-05-06

Protesters march in the streets of New York in memory of the
Occupy Wall Street movement. (Photo/CNS)

The world's protest model has been reshaped by Occupy Wall Street in 2011 in the US. The Sunflower Student Movement in March-April in Taiwan was also influenced by Occupy Wall Street. Ever since the movement in New York in 2011, the idea of "occupying" has become a new protest model that has become increasingly popular in Taiwan, reports our sister spaper China Times.

Occupy Wall Street was itself inspired by the Arab Spring movement of the same year, and soon other sites in New York and 1,500 cities around the world were taken over by activists, with hundreds of thousands of people responding.

Chiang Chi-ji, a student who took part in the Sunflower Movement, which occupied the main chamber of Taiwan's Legislature for over three weeks in opposition to a controversial trade deal with China, said the movement had several similarities with Occupy Wall Street. Both movements were formed because people felt oppressed by institutions and they also disagreed with a large quantity of resources and power falling into the hands of a few, Chiang said. As they tried to resolve the situation through institutionalized channels without success, the people could not take it any more and were left to occupy the streets to take their rights back, he said.

"In the future, I know I can achieve my means through such an approach," Chiang said when asked about what he learned from the Sunflower Movement.

Wu Cheng, another Sunflower student, said their movement did not intentionally intend to imitate Occupy Wall Street, but that both conveyed public anger.

Occupy Wall Street was a movement to express anger at the inequality of income levels in the US as well as the power that financial institutions exercise over government by spending money to have politicians lobby to influence policy in their favor. They believe this imbalance is what led to the financial crisis of 2008, Wu said.

On the other hand, the Sunflower Student Movement started with a political-economic issue, but soon spilled over into a challenge to Taiwan's fundamental political and democratic process, according to Wu.

Students in the Sunflower Movement used the same hand signals that protesters in Occupy Wall Street used at meetings in order for thousands of people to communicate and receive the same information at the same time.

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