Written by Klavier Wang.
Image credit: Umbrella Movement Tents (35223638963) by qbix08 from United Kingdom/ Wikimedia Commons, license: CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED.
For almost ten years, the wallpaper of my smartphone remained the same: In the centre of the University Mall (百萬大道) of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), draping down were two gigantic size black-and-white banners that read “Resistance to grip our fate; Class boycott is the one and only way.” (抗命捉緊命運，罷課勢在必行).
The photo was taken on September 22, 2014, the first day of the one-week cross-university class boycott, to convey the academia’s oppositional voice to the government’s political reformation roadmap. CUHK epitomised the centre stage of this boycott action, which was later deemed as the prelude to the Umbrella Movement. As if destiny had foreseen, five years after, during the anti-ELAB (Extradition Law Amendment Bill) movement, CUHK again became a battleground.
Throughout March, my social media pages have been filled with stories from people who, to various extents, experienced Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Movement (a movement initially protesting against the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement with China, also called the CSSTA). 2024 marks the tenth anniversary of the Umbrella Movement and the Sunflower Movement. Within these ten years, while Taiwan experienced a change of ruling party through universal suffrage, Hong Kong staged her historically largest-scale street protest, which subsequently led to dramatic socio-political changes. Looking back on the occupy movements after ten years, the legacies created in 2014 were nevertheless inherited, reformed, and redefined by civil society.
Movement place-making
Place-making originally refers to a process of transforming physical spaces into vibrant and inclusive environments that foster community engagement and identity. This process involves participation from different stakeholders. In social movement studies, scholars such as Frenzel, Feigenbaum, and McCurdy noticed the rising influence of protest camps in movement sites as catalysts for identity creation, expression, political contention, and incubators for social change. By taking place a critical symbolic action or repeatedly executing the same activity in one place, the social impact of that space is (re)defined. Lee and Chan’s study on the making of the Tiananmen Square collective memory in Hong Kong pointed out the crucial role played by Victoria Park in Hong Kong – a recreational space turned into a memorial landmark.
The “Civic Square” and the Legislative Yuan
The Umbrella Movement debuted in a movement-defined space. On September 26, 2014, the last day of the one-week class boycott actions, as the atmosphere was getting tense, Joshua Wong, then the leader of the student activism organisation Scholarism, announced, “Reclaim our space at the Civic Square.” A group of activists had already climbed over the fence and stormed the space called “Civic Square”. Before 2012, this space was simply called “a space adjacent to the East Wing of the Legislative Council building.” In 2012, during the anti-national-education movement led by Scholarism, several important gatherings took place at this space. The eventual positive result achieved by this movement led to the “crowning” of the “Civic Square”. If the 2012 movement was the crowning moment, the 2014 “Reclaim Civic Square” action symbolised the deification of the space – media cameras from the world zoomed in to “Civic Square”, witnessing the forceful eviction and the forever enclosing of the space to the general public. Afterwards, people attach flowers, greeting cards, and even lucky charms on the iron fence of the “Civic Square” to “commemorate.”
In Taiwan, activists kicked off the Sunflower Movement by occupying the heart of high-ranking politics – the Legislative Yuan. On the night of March 18, activists broke the police blockades and entered the chamber. Throughout the nearly one-month “occupy Legislative Yuan” action, activists transformed the chamber into a town hall and formulated a “civic legislation” system to discuss and deliberate the CSSTA. Thousands of movement participants subsequently proposed a civic version of the CSSTA.
Occupying a physical place was core to both the Umbrella Movement and the Sunflower Movement. While the “Occupy Civic Square” action in Hong Kong signified how people defined and empowered a government-owned but ordinary space, the “Occupy Legislative Yuan” action in Taiwan demonstrated a space re-defining process during which participatory democracy was attempted in the legislative chamber-turned town hall.
The Protest Tents/Camps
On September 28, Hong Kong police fired 87 tear gas grenades to dispel thousands of Hong Kong people gathered in Admiralty. While tear gas failed to dispel the crowds, instead, more people took to the streets. Overnight, the eight-lane vehicle drive in Admiralty became the largest protest camp in Hong Kong history, and this camp sprawled from Admiralty to Causeway Bay and Mongkok, lasting nearly three months. Compared to the case of the “Civic Square”, the protest camps in the above-mentioned commercial areas demonstrated a more comprehensive range of diversity, unexpectedness, and inclusiveness. Images of the movement circulating online remind us how people transformed the space into multi-purposes – discussion forums, co-working spaces, recreation playgrounds, and classrooms. There was a new lifestyle social movement embedded in the political movement, and the happening of the lifestyle movement was made possible through place-making with “inclusiveness” – “people from all walks of life, often with no organisational affiliations, rallied to occupy three business districts for seventy-nine days”. While the place-making process of the “Civic Square” relied on physical force, the making of the protest camps was through living everyday life out in the movement space.
Similarly, after activists broke into the legislative chamber, the area surrounding the building was soon occupied by supporters. Tents were set up, accompanied by refreshment stations, phone charging stations, and mobile restrooms. While Hong Kong activists flipped the CBDs into a vast everyday living space, Taiwan activists occupied the area surrounding the Legislative Yuan by transforming the space into classrooms and discussion forums centring on a common theme – democracy. Different from the Hong Kong activists who turned the streets into a living space, Sunflower Movement fellows transformed the streets into a university.
Online place-making
I observed mobile place-making in the Umbrella Movement. At the breakout of the movement, groups on various social media platforms were immediately set up to facilitate on-site communication, logistics, and strategic planning. By joining these groups, supporters voluntarily filled the gaps wherever needed so that resources could be better mobilised and utilised – supplies of water, food, protest gear, and first aid were always by your side.
In Taiwan, in addition to what was described above, a landmark civic organisation was founded following the outbreak of the Sunflower Movement – the g0v (零時政府), a public policy-focused online space. Founded by a group of information engineers, during the movement, g0v provided activists with live maps of movement resource allocation, ongoing activities, and population at different locations. G0v also supported live transmission of discussions between people inside and outside of the chamber. After the Sunflower Movement, g0v continued actively participating in public policy-making and open-government advocacy with the aid of geospatial and big data mining technologies.
Mobile place-making
Last but not least, during the Umbrella Movement, a small-scale action series was carried out outside of the major protest camping sites – the “shopping mobs” (鳩嗚團). Activists strolled around streets in the name of “shopping” while carrying pro-democracy banners. This mobile protest action even lasted longer than the protest camps. Coincidently, during the 2019 anti-ELAB movement, similar flash mob actions were performed on a larger scale and covering more districts, namely flash collective singing in shopping malls, flash banner hoisting actions on footbridges, and even flash attacks. Thanks to Hong Kong’s advanced information infrastructure, actions of various scales were orchestrated and coordinated by a large group of anonymous, digital-savvy citizens.
Following the 2019 anti-ELAB movement and the passing of the national security law, many Hong Kong people moved out of the city. Taiwan has become a popular place for them to settle in. Interestingly, this place-making process continues to be accomplished in Taiwan. Independent bookstores display Hong Kong-related publications (especially those banned in Hong Kong), organise public forums, and formulate a networking zone for diasporas. Restaurants feature Hong Kong staple street foods while displaying images of Hong Kong pro-democracy movements on the walls. Scholars continue their research on Hong Kong. In Taiwan, a Hong Kong civil society is in the making.
Conclusion
I once argued the 2012 anti-national-education movement was a necessary precursor to the 2014 Umbrella Movement (Wang, 2017). Looking back on the Umbrella Movement and the Sunflower Movement after ten years, I realise how movement resources and legacies are quietly passed to the next generation, even though not every part of a movement was accepted (in this case, the centre-stage symbol in the Umbrella Movement was thoroughly renounced by anti-ELAB activists). By taking a retrospective account of these two critical movements, we grabble the textures that weave Hong Kong and Taiwan’s civil society development and social movement history.
Klavier Wang is an Assistant Professor at the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. She is a Hong Konger living in Taiwan.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Tenth Anniversary of the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements‘.
Taiwan Insight 
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