Written by Michael Mo.
Image credit: 林飛帆/ Facebook.
A decade ago, it was not hard to spot Hong Kong pro-democracy politicians and activists inside and around the Legislative Yuan showing their support for the Sunflower Movement (SM). The SM’s initial success further attracted scholars and activists who flew from Hong Kong to learn what could be referenced for the pro-democracy sit-in protest, which later debuted the Umbrella Movement (UM) in September of the same year. Activists of the two movements enhanced their exchanges and later contested elections on their home soil.
Still, the paths of activist-turned-politicians have gone different ways – prominent SM leaders have become members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The SM-brewed New Power Party (NPP) lost all the seats in the Legislative Yuan after an internal split, with a sizeable number of its members switching to, or allied with, the DPP. As a result, these activists backtracked or expressed less dissatisfaction with the policies rolled out by the DPP government compared to the days they were activists. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s UM activists formed several new political parties and competed against politicians representing established pro-democracy parties in the 2016 Legislative Council (LegCo) Election and won several seats by expressing hostility towards the veterans in the campaign trails. Such a phenomenon re-emerged in the unofficial pro-democracy primary held in 2020 despite the culture of “Do not split”, which was widely accepted in the pro-democracy protests the year before.
The diverged pathways of the two movements’ activist-turned-politicians are possibly reinforced by the different electoral systems in their respective jurisdictions, making the political cultures within the progressive spectrum less polarised in Taiwan while more polarised in Hong Kong until the whole city’s civil society is dismantled under Beijing’s national security regimes.
Being a progressive and edgy politician – Limited fortune in Taiwan; Worthwhile gamble in Hong Kong
Since the seventh Legislative Yuan in 2008, the method of electing lawmakers has posed significant challenges to candidates representing small parties in Taiwan. The single non-transferable vote system in geographical constituencies made small parties with progressive values unable to compete unless their candidates were given way by or formed an election coalition with the DPP. The seats elected through the party-list proportional representation system were evenly difficult for these small parties, as the threshold to reach 5% of total party votes had only been achieved by the Taiwan Solidarity Union in 2012 and NPP in 2016 and 2020. Other progressive parties with almost three decades of operations, such as the Green Party Taiwan, have never won a seat in the legislature since the 2008 election rules became effective.
With Taiwan’s electoral system for the legislature reinforcing the advantage of large parties over smaller ones, the SM activists have gradually abandoned the NPP, the party they formed, and switched to, or further allied with, the DPP or defected to Ko Wen-je’s Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). DPP provided a wide range of opportunities for these SM activists, such as running for legislature under their party label or in a label-less coalition and as a staff of the secretariat. Likewise, Ko’s TPP offered Huang Kuo-chang as the top-of-the-list candidate on the party’s list for the legislature in 2024, facilitating Huang’s return to the legislature after leaving the NPP. These opportunities for SM activists presented by the larger parties appeared hard to resist, as building their own movement parties from scratch or running as an independent candidate without the blessing of the large parties had proven too difficult to win.
In contrast, Hong Kong’s LegCo’s proportional representation system in geographical constituencies before the overhaul in 2021 encouraged independents and small-party candidates to compete, and the chance of winning a seat was higher than becoming the second candidate on the party ticket. The fragmentation of the pro-democracy camp became apparent after the camp divided on whether to support the Beijing-led constitutional reform package in 2010. For instance, People Power (PP), led by former leader of the League of Social Democrats (LSD) Raymond Wong, won 3 seats in 3 different geographical constituencies in the 2012 LegCo election. Similarly, Gary Fan, who left the Democratic Party and founded his new party, Neo Democrats, won his first LegCo seat in the same year.
The UM in 2014 further polarised the spectrum of the pro-democracy camp. The formation of political groups representing anti-China localists and progressive localists captured pro-democracy voters who were frustrated by the performance of the veteran democrats in pressurising Beijing to democratise Hong Kong. Candidates representing these groups, ranging from UM leaders-led Demosisto to Youngspiration, formed by activists who participated in the 79-day occupation but were upset by the UM leaders, took several seats in the 2016 LegCo Election. Nevertheless, the majority of them were disqualified for being accused of not taking their oath sincerely.
Hide your emotions for gains versus expressing your hostility for advantage
While the DPP might have benefited from the SM as they won the 2016 Presidential and Legislative elections by a landslide, the policy direction of the Tsai administration also upset those who were deeply involved in the Movement. For instance, the amendment of the Labour Standards Act in 2017 made SM activists, who have become staffers of cabinet members and DPP legislators, express their disappointment. Also, netizens found that Lin Fei-fan publicly expressed multiple disagreements over DPP before becoming the party’s deputy secretary general in 2019. Yet, these SM activists either expressed their views in pseudonyms or, like Lin, took all the netizens’ blame for U-turns and moved on. The job security and political prospectus offered by the DPP, and the fact that the party would impose disciplinary actions against the rebels, might be the key to restraining these SM activists from demonstrating hostility against the party and the government further, making these activists affectively depolarised.
In contrast, UM’s activist-turned-politicians continued to express hostility even after their victories in the 2016 LegCo Election. In two LegCo by-elections in 2018 triggered by the disqualifications of the pro-democracy lawmakers, UM activists and localists continued to express hostility against the Democrats. They even launched an election petition against the Neo Democrat’s winning of the by-election. While these hostilities among factions have been side-lined by the anti-ELAB Movement in 2019, the emotions re-emerged in the pro-democracy unofficial primary debate forums. The rules of proportional representation in Hong Kong’s LegCo election effectively made UM activists pledge radical actions over moderate Democrats to segmentise and maximise their advantage in the ballot box. Once again, the electoral rules of LegCo brought up affective polarisation among the pro-democracy camp, especially encouraging UM and anti-ELAB activists to demonstrate hostility against veteran pro-democracy politicians.
At the end of the day, whether the SM and UM activist-turned-politicians expressed hostility against the established were associated with the electoral system of the legislatures and the party politics where they reside. While activists across the strait showed signs of frustration towards their respective establishments, the way to handle these emotions differently – hiding and backtracking the emotions would yield the best prospectus in Taiwan, articulating the common frustrations of lacking democratic progress held by pro-democracy supporters have brought a rapid rise of the UM activists in the political arena. Handling these negative affects by the activist-turned-politicians across the strait was rather rational.
Evolving contexts but affect remains
A decade after the SM and UM, Taiwan’s political scene progressed, and Hong Kong became a stifled place for dissidents. Nevertheless, the ramifications of affective depolarisation in Taiwan and affective polarisation in Hong Kong remain. While Taiwan’s SM activists might have secured their political careers with the DPP by depolarising themselves, the growing detachment between the DPP and the country’s youth contributed to the rise of TPP. In the case of Hong Kong, the tension between localists and veteran Democrats remains apparent in the US and the UK diaspora community. While the change of dynamics of SM activist-turned-politicians could be observed in every election, only time can tell when or if the UM generation can reconcile with their veteran counterparts.
Michael Mo is an elected member of the 6th District Council in Hong Kong and the Sanctuary scholar at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Tenth Anniversary of the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements‘.
Taiwan Insight 