The impact of youth on Taiwanese politics began with    the Sunflower Movement of 2014. This movement consisted of a month-long occupation of Taiwan’s Legislative Assembly by students protesting against a trade agreement that the then-ruling KMT party, the Taiwan’s old authoritarian party back in power, intended to sign with China. The moves raised fears not just about China, but about a resurgence of authoritarianism in Taiwan after decades of one-party KMT rule.
The KMT ruled Taiwan during what was the world’s longest period of martial law. A stage that concluded thanks to a democratic movement, one of the results of which was the appearance of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), currently in power. Among the most important movements of that period are student ones, such as the Wild Lily Movement, a student occupation of the square in front of the Chiang Kai Chek monument. These youth-led protests in many ways set the tone for subsequent student movements. And they paved the way for other parties to take power.
However, the movement that highlighted the current generation of Taiwanese youth was the Sunflower Movement. The KMT first lost the presidency in 2000 due to internal party disunity that split the vote among multiple candidates but retained a legislative majority, which it only lost for the first time in 2016. In 2008, the recapture of the presidency by the KMT under the leadership of Ma Yingjeou raised concerns, as Ma took steps to facilitate closer economic relations with China in the hope that this would lead to a strengthening of political ties.
The KMT had settled in Taiwan fleeing its defeat in the civil war that pitted it against the Communist Party of China (CCP), but over time it reinvented itself as a party in favor of unification with China, even though this occurs under the auspices of the CCP. The Across-Strait Trade in Services Agreement against which the Sunflower Movement reacted would have allowed Chinese investment in Taiwan’s services sector, which represented 65% of national GDP. Likewise, in previous years, fears had been unleashed about the purchase of Taiwanese newspapers and television channels by magnates close to the KMT, with the consequent shift of editorial lines in a direction favorable to unification and the dissemination of positive opinions about China. , even at the cost of covering up human rights abuses.
A fundamental consequence of the Sunflower Movement was that it drastically changed the social verdict on Taiwanese youth. Previously, young people had been criticized as weak and branded as the strawberry generation, considered soft and less tough than their boomer parents; However, the vision of young people changed and from that moment on they were considered a generation willing to take political risks in defense of their convictions.
That mobilization was one of the main factors contributing to a surge of youth participation in politics. As a result, several young candidates with a background in activism ran for office, marking the entry into electoral politics of a new generation of politicians.
The support of young people has been considered crucial in the rise to power of the current president, Tsai Ingwen, of the PDP; Tsai is the first non-KMT leader to preside over Taiwan with a non-KMT majority Legislative Assembly. The PDP first won a legislative majority in 2016, when Tsai was elected. The support of the youth also led to the emergence of third parties that sought to break with the traditional bipartisanship (KMT-PDP), such as the New Power Party (PNP), the Taiwan State Building Party (PCET) and the Taiwan Party. People’s Republic of Taiwan (PPT), as well as the victories of heterodox politicians such as Ko Wen Je, PPT chairman and former mayor of Taipei who was initially close to the PDP-led pan-green camp and later veered towards the PDP-led pan-blue camp. the KMT.
Despite performing well in local elections in 2018 and 2022, the KMT commands low support among youth (it has historically always performed better in local elections for councilors and mayors, but has faced greater challenges in legislative and presidential elections). As of November 2020, the KMT had fewer than 9,000 members under the age of 40, although the party claims that membership has since increased by 40%.
The KMT’s inability to change its pro-Chinese image and discard unpopular positions that lead it to be perceived as irrationally pro-unification (such as the 1992 Consensus) has been a major factor in its inability to win elections and regain momentum from the past. . Identity trends in Taiwan overwhelmingly favor Taiwanese identity, while uniquely Chinese identity and identification with both identities are on the decline.
The descendants of those who came to Taiwan with the KMT only represent 10% of the population. The remaining 90% includes around 2% of the indigenous population and 88% of the population descended from the migratory waves of the Han ethnic group during the last four hundred years. However, even the young descendants of those who came to Taiwan with the KMT increasingly identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, since they lack the direct memories of their Chinese-born grandparents and have grown up only in Taiwan. This was especially visible with the Sunflower Movement, which was sometimes called the post-ethnic movement, as the identity divisions between the descendants of previous waves of Han migration and the descendants of those who had arrived with the KMT were overcome: the young descendants of both groups came together to protest against the KMT trade deal.
For this reason, the current generation of Taiwanese has sometimes been called the generation of natural independence. In other words, a pro-Taiwanese generation in favor of maintaining de facto independence from China and contemporary democratic freedoms. They do not hold views in favor of unification, but they also differ from previous generations of pro-independence activists (such as the original founders of the PDP) in that they do not consider a formal declaration of independence to be necessary. To them, Taiwan is already a sovereign democratic and independent nation under the name of the Republic of China (the name of the state that the Kuomintang brought with it to Taiwan after its withdrawal from the mainland), and a formal declaration of independence seeking de jure recognition. would provoke military retaliation from China.
In response to such sentiments from the youth, Tsai Ingwen’s PDP has renounced its historic defense of independence. Tsai is a pro-status quo leader; she explicitly asserts that Taiwan is already sovereign and independent as the ROC and that no declaration of independence is necessary, despite the fact that this view has irritated veterans of her party at times.
For its part, the KMT has not been able to attract young people. It hasn’t been for a lack of trying: Successive presidents who were elected on pro-reform platforms had the support of the party’s younger members, such as current president Eric Chu and former president Johnny Chiang.
However, these leaders have faced strong opposition from unification supporters, who are becoming increasingly vocal. These hardliners believe that the party’s traditional values ​​are under attack and that the current generation of Taiwanese youth have been brainwashed by the PDP. Now, rather than do something as practical as attempt a makeover to appear less uncritically pro-Chinese, hardliners are calling for a return to party fundamentals. Hence the rise of KMT hardliners such as former President Hung Hsiu-chu (a brief presidential candidate in the 2016 election before being replaced by Chu due to his great unpopularity), media figure Jaw Shaw- Kong and former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu, the KMT’s 2020 presidential candidate.
Such politicians hardly inspire sympathy among Taiwanese youth, who are, after all, the future of Taiwan. At the same time, there is an element of intergenerational conflict between young and old.
Still, at a time of declining birthrates and increasing demographic aging, the elderly are increasingly outnumbering the young in Taiwan. Therefore, even if Taiwan is to be inherited by the young, they could find themselves outmatched at the polls.
Young KMT politicians have sometimes criticized the party leadership for its inability to move away from pro-China positions. They published an open letter criticizing the party leadership on the occasion of a visit by Vice President Andrew Hsia to China, where he met Xi government officials following live-fire drills conducted last August by the People’s Liberation Army around the island. These meetings occurred after the historic visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, the first speaker of the US House of Representatives to set foot on the island in a quarter of a century.
However, the KMT youth have not always been listened to. On the contrary, they are increasingly being branded as potential traitors: the KMT has long feared that the Pro-Taiwanese would rise through the party and seize power, as former president Lee Teng Hui did in the 1990s.
Still, many questions remain about the future of Taiwanese youth. For example, at the end of December, President Tsai Ingwen announced the extension of the period of military service from the current four months to one year for all men over the age of 18. This was a response to the escalation of Chinese military threats not only after the live-fire maneuvers carried out around the island, but also after the invasion of Ukraine.
Historically, since the KMT arrived in Taiwan, conscription has lasted between one and three years, but it was reduced to four months under the Ma government. To make the measure more palatable to young people in a time of low wages and long working hours, the new measures by the Tsai government include a more than triple increase in the wages of recruits.
After the announcement, some young people judged that it was a necessary measure for the defense of Taiwan; others attacked what they considered had been released without due consultation with young people about their future. Perhaps that difference reflects a division of opinion among young people about the likelihood of war.
Despite international headlines claiming that the August live-fire drills could escalate into World War III, there was little hyperbolic reaction in Taiwan and life went on. Identity trends and election results show that young people are actually worried about the threat from China and do not want to become part of that country. Still, the willingness to serve in the military is low.
In part that is due to the army’s troubled public image. The military is closely associated with the KMT due to its role as executors of that party’s will in authoritarian times. They are also seen as a bastion of the KMT’s pro-Chinese nationalism, to the point that some wonder if they would fight in the event of war. Those perceptions decrease the willingness of young people to serve in the military.
However, just as the current generation of youth is the generation of natural independence, which has only known Taiwan and naturally identifies as Taiwanese, it is also the first generation born after martial law and democratization. They have lived their entire lives under the threat of a Chinese military attack, which may predispose them to take it less seriously, as a potential possibility in the long term, but not in the short term.
In this regard, questions have been raised about the next generation of Taiwanese youth, who did not experience pivotal moments like the Sunflower Movement. That generation has grown up without experiencing the rise of China; to them, China has always been great and powerful, and all their lives it has dwarfed Taiwan. It is also a generation born after the proliferation of social networks. Whether that influences his views on China remains to be seen; and there is a particular fear of the degree to which they may be sensitive to disinformation efforts directed at them with the aim of creating a positive perception of China.
Brian Chee-Shing Hioe. Director of ‘New Bloom Magazine’, he writes for ‘The Diplomat’, ‘Popula’, ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The Nation’ and ‘The Guardian’. He is a Non-Resident Research Fellow in the Taiwan Studies Program (University of Nottingham).