Students in Taiwan are continuing their occupation of the courtyard of the Education Ministry in Taipei, objecting to changes to textbooks scheduled to be delivered to schools during the week. Talks with ministry officials have gone nowhere.
The students, many of them still in high school, had broken into the compound on Friday following the suicide, a day earlier, of Lin Kuan-hua, a 20-year-old leader of the demonstrators. Students say Lin took his life in “a silent protest.”
The occupation followed a similar disturbance beginning July 23rd when students barricaded themselves in the office of the embattled education minister, Wu Se-hwa. As Reuters reports, the increasingly defiant acts, the largest on the island in more than a year, reflect “a surge of nationalism among Taiwan’s youth, who are far more likely than their elders to identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.”
The changes to the textbooks are controversial because they touch on identity. The revised texts state Taiwan was “recovered by China” instead of “given to China” at the end of Japanese rule in 1945. They also label the island as “Japan occupied.” Prior to the revision, they referred to “Japan governing” Taiwan.
Students charge the new wordings are “China-centric.” The education ministry, on the other hand, defends the revisions as an effort at “de-Japanization,” not “de-Taiwanization.”
Because the telling of history is considered the key to the future of the island, Minister Wu is doggedly trying to push through changes, some seemingly minor, in the face of determined opposition. His party, the Kuomintang, stands for political union with China. Both the ruling party and local Taiwanese see education as the key battleground in shaping identity.
The Kuomintang in the late 1940s fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communist Party and then harshly suppressed Taiwan language and culture as a means of establishing its rule. Today it is again Taiwan’s ruling party, and although it still maintains it is the legitimate government of “China,” it has had to give in to pressure and allow more schooling on Taiwan subjects. Whether this relaxation is a cause or effect, studies show progressively fewer in Taiwan consider themselves to be Chinese. An American Enterprise Institute study released late last year, for instance, shows 60.4 percent of citizens say they are “Taiwanese” versus 3.5 percent responding “Chinese.”
As more people on the island embrace local history and culture, the possibility of “re-unification,” the term favored by the ruling party, or “unification,” the word used by Taiwanese who claim China has never ruled them, becomes increasingly remote. Kuomintang stalwarts, unrealistically, want to do everything they can to reverse Taiwan consciousness while they still govern—or “occupy,” as some Taiwanese would put it.
At least at this moment, it does not appear the ruling party has much time left, so it is pushing through its agenda as fast as it can. Most every analyst now believes the Democratic Progressive Party will win the presidency in January. And in the last few weeks there is even talk that the DPP, sometimes referred to as “pro-independence,” will also win a majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan, the national legislature. A sweep of the executive and legislature for the DPP would be unprecedented.
The DPP, founded by Taiwanese in 1986, could be the beneficiary of the civil disobedience that has rocked the island since March of last year when other students, now dubbed the Sunflower Movement, occupied the Legislative Yuan for 23 days. Then, the issue was the Kuomintang ramming a services trade agreement with China through the legislature. Yet the new air of defiance in society is not partisan, as it transcends party affiliation.
In any event, it is clear that most Taiwan voters are angry about the hardheadedness of the Kuomintang, which has not bowed to public opinion on “China” issues. President Ma Ying-jeou, for instance, opened his party up for a historic rout in November by insisting on making local elections a referendum on his derided cross-strait policies. Then to make matters worse, last month his party inexplicably nominated a fiery pro-China presidential candidate, Hung Hsiu-chu, thereby rejecting moderate figures who actually had a much better chance of winning in January.
DPP officials privately rejoiced at the selection of Hung, known as the “Little Hot Pepper” for her extremist comments, but the selection of the Kuomintang’s weakest candidate has broader significance than the outcome of any single election.
Taiwan’s ruling party appears to be making a last-gasp effort to enforce its vision of a grand Chinese union across the Taiwan Strait. And high school students storming government buildings show that Taiwan society is absolutely determined to protect its sense of self.