Written by Thung-Hong Lin
Image credit: Nga Shi Yeu. An indiscriminate attack occurred at Taipei Main Station on December 19. In its aftermath, the public laid flowers and left messages at the site to mourn and thank the victim who died while trying to stop the attack.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025, based on a survey of nearly one thousand international experts, ranks armed conflict and extreme climate events as the top short‑term global risks. It also identifies Taiwan as a place simultaneously exposed to both hazards. In 2025, that warning felt uncomfortably accurate: geopolitical competition intensified, domestic politics hardened into a stalemate, and climate‑driven disasters struck in succession. Yet Taiwan did not simply absorb these shocks. When formal institutions slowed under polarisation, Taiwan’s civic sector—NGOs, professional communities, informal networks, and ordinary citizens—became a crucial source of resilience.
Political Deadlock Before Climate Disaster
After Taiwan’s 2024 general election, divided government quickly became a confrontation. The Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) won a combined majority in the legislature, while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) retained the presidency. The KMT–TPP bloc moved to revise laws, expand local government budgets, and delay or block key defence appropriations. Supporters framed these steps as democratic oversight and fiscal rebalancing. Critics argued that they violated constitutional norms and created space for legislative agendas perceived as more accommodating of Beijing.
The backlash coalesced in the so‑called Bluebird (Qingniao) Movement, which mixed street rallies with rapid online mobilisation against what protesters described as pro‑China legislative initiatives. That momentum helped drive recall campaigns against several lawmakers in the first half of 2025. The civic‑driven recall effort, however, failed across the board after KMT local factions mobilised heavily through long‑standing grassroots networks. President Lai Ching‑te’s standing then suffered another blow on April 1, when the Trump administration announced “Liberation Day” tariffs, undercutting the political advantage of a hard line toward China.
Then the Climate Risks Arrived
In early July, Typhoon Danas made landfall along Taiwan’s southwest coast near the Tainan–Chiayi corridor—an uncommon track not seen so directly for decades. Its unusual path and the extreme rainfall that followed caused nine deaths and 727 injuries, with direct and indirect losses exceeding US$200 million. On July 21, rainfall associated with the outer circulation of Typhoon Wipha triggered landslides in Hualien County. Upstream on the Mataian River near the Guangfu–Wanrong area, debris had dammed the channel, forming a growing barrier lake.
Even as political quarrels dominated July and August, Taiwan’s scientific community monitored the lake and warned of the consequences if the temporary dam failed. In September, torrential rains from the outer bands of Typhoon Ragasa further destabilised the site. On the morning of September 23, the barrier lake collapsed, sending a sudden surge downstream that killed 20 people and injured 157.
This disaster was not only a story of rainfall and geology; it was also a story about governance under polarisation. On September 21, the DPP central government ordered the evacuation of roughly 8,000 residents in threatened areas. Yet the KMT‑led Hualien County government did not fully implement the order across all localities. Some communities remained in place, and the collapse produced severe casualties in a few pockets. The disaster reignited partisan blame, but it also showed how costly fragmented authority can be when speed and compliance determine survival.
“Shovel Superheroes” Rush to Hualien
In Guangfu Township alone, more than a thousand households were affected. Many homes were filled with mud, rocks, and splintered wood. Heavy machinery could clear roads and remove debris outside, but excavators could not enter narrow lanes or reach deep into small houses. For countless families, recovery depended on hand labour and an ordinary tool: the shovel. With too few workers and too much sludge, cleanup was slow and exhausting, and central and county governments traded accusations over incomplete evacuation and slow reconstruction.
During Taiwan’s consecutive holidays in late September, a different mechanism began to work far more effectively than partisan institutions. NGOs, neighbourhood associations, university groups, religious communities, and spontaneous online teams coordinated volunteer deployments through social media, sharing practical instructions: what to bring, where to report, which streets were short-staffed, and how to work safely. On many days, an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people showed up to help.
The scale was striking, but the headline totals require careful interpretation. Media and organisers spoke of roughly 500,000 volunteers (person‑times) over about a month—attendance counted by trips and workdays, not by unique individuals. The number of distinct volunteers is uncertain and may have been substantially lower, perhaps closer to 200,000 to 300,000. Even so, the impact was tangible: more than 600 houses were eventually cleared enough for residents to begin returning and rebuilding.
The media dubbed these volunteers as “Shovel Superheroes.” The label captured both the simplicity of the tool and the moral weight of showing up. Only weeks earlier, many civic networks were demoralised by the failed recall campaigns and strained by political polarisation. Yet after the landslide, they pivoted from protest to practical solidarity, supplying labour, logistics, donations, and psychological support—precisely the functions that matter when government coordination is slow, contested, or trapped in partisan blame.
A Second Test in December
A different kind of shock tested Taiwan’s resilience on December 19. Near Taipei Main Station, an unemployed and socially alienated man launched an indiscriminate attack. He threw multiple smoke bombs and, according to subsequent reports, intended to ignite fifteen Molotov cocktails inside the station. A traveller, Yu Jia‑chang, intervened and was fatally stabbed. The attacker then fled into a nearby department store complex and stabbed additional victims; eight were reportedly injured, and two people in the department store later died from their injuries. The suspect later died after falling from the building during a police pursuit. Four people died in total: Yu, two department‑store victims, and the suspect.
In the chaotic aftermath, nearby doctors and volunteers rushed to assist the wounded, providing emergency care and helping stabilise victims before ambulances arrived. Taipei’s police, operating under a KMT‑led city government, were criticised for responding too slowly to contain the threat. Once again, the first barrier against a larger catastrophe was not bureaucratic speed but civilian action—one person’s intervention, and many others’ rapid, improvised aid.
Resilience under Multiple Risks
By the end of 2025, Taiwan had endured a tariff shock from the United States, continued military pressure from China, and climate‑driven disasters at home. Yet the economy still recorded an unexpectedly strong 7.4 per cent growth rate. That figure reflects more than industrial output; it points to a broader capacity to adapt—firms and supply chains adjusting to disruption, communities absorbing losses, and civic networks preventing crises from cascading into paralysis.
If Taiwan’s politics in 2025 were defined by deadlock, Taiwan’s society was characterised by coordination. The “Shovel Superheroes” who streamed into Hualien deserve to be remembered as Taiwan’s people of the year. Compared with parties trapped in stalemate, they represent the island’s most durable strengths: a vibrant market economy, a dense civic infrastructure, and a willingness to act collectively on behalf of strangers. In an era of overlapping risks, that everyday civic courage—sometimes expressed with nothing more than a shovel—may be the deepest source of Taiwan’s resilience.
Dr Thung-Hong Lin is a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, in Taipei, Taiwan, and has been co-hired by the Research Center for Environmental Changes at Academia Sinica since 2021. His research interests span social stratification and mobility, economic and political sociology, the sociology of disaster, comparative political economy, and quantitative methods.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Review Taiwan 2025: Challenges, Continuities, and Change.’
Taiwan Insight 