China Research Monograph 76. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2020. viii, 263 pp. (Tables, B&W photos.) US$25.00, paper. ISBN 978-155729191-2.
Following the recent dismantling of Hong Kong’s partial democracy, awareness of the threat China’s authoritarianism poses to Taiwan’s hard-won democratic institutions has grown across Taiwanese society. The People’s Republic of China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, despite never having controlled the territory and its people. The crackdown on Hong Kong’s civil society following protests against a controversial extradition bill in 2019–2020 demonstrated the great lengths to which the Chinese government is willing to go to assert control over its periphery. Following the recent escalation of the war in Ukraine, many observers have pointed to parallels to the Taiwanese case and stoked fears that Taiwan could be the next target of invasion by an authoritarian neighbour. Sunflowers and Umbrellas: Social Movements, Expressive Practices, and Political Culture in Taiwan and Hong Kong takes us back to a more hopeful time in the history of the region. Edited by Thomas Gold and Sebastian Veg, the book offers an in-depth comparison of Taiwan’s Sunflower and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movements of 2014, two campaigns that captured the imagination of global audiences. While the Sunflower Movement focused on the student-led occupation of Taiwan’s parliament to block the ratification of a controversial trade deal with China, the Umbrella Movement entailed large-scale street occupations to push for democratic reform in Hong Kong. Both movements are often compared to one another due to their many shared characteristics, including the reliance on digital communication technologies, prominent student involvement, democratic experimentation, and—most importantly—their geostrategic context as peripheral challenges to China’s authoritarianism. The nuanced contributions in this excellent edited volume elucidate how movement participants enacted their democratic hopes, visions, and identities at critical times in the history of these societies.
The book is the product of a conference held at the University of California, Berkeley in March 2018 that brought together a group composed of both young and more senior scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds, as well as movement participants, to discuss the two movements. Since the volume deals with two major East Asian protest movements of recent years, it is not surprising that a range of insightful case studies and even comparative works already exist. What sets this book apart is its imaginative framework; the editors have done a great job at tying the various contributions together and situating them within the social movement literature. Gold and Veg point out in their introduction that rather than building upon more conventional concepts of social movement studies such as political opportunity structure, their edited volume focuses on the symbolic and cultural dimensions of protest. They convincingly argue that the two movements not only posed legalistic claims vis-à-vis the state, but also constituted “expressive and deliberative performances” that “provided an opportunity to act out deeper changes in identity and political culture that both societies were and are undergoing” (5).
The composition of the book fits this framework. There are three main themes. First, several chapters deal with political and organizational dynamics. Edmund W. Cheng discusses the fraught process under which a “polycentric” leadership structure developed in the Umbrella Movement. Ming-sho Ho, Chun-hao Huang, and Liang Ling Lin find, based on an analysis of written documents produced during the occupation, that there were differences in movement self-perception between rank-and-file participants and the leadership of the Sunflower Movement. The historical development of rivalling resistance strategies in Hong Kong as part of the search for political identity is the subject of a chapter by Wai-man Lam. Ian Rowen offers a comparative analysis of how Chinese tourism—a contentious subject in both societies—affected the two movements.
The theme of the second part of the book is the expressive dimension of protest. Brian Hioe discusses the visual and aural practices that turned the Sunflower occupation into a carnivalesque political spectacle. The role of music in the Umbrella Movement as an integral part of the expression and negotiation of local identity is the subject of a chapter by Sebastian Veg. Judith Pernin compares the broad range of movement documentaries produced by filmmakers embedded in the two movements and situates them in the broader history of activist documentary making in these contexts.
The last part of the book is devoted to the movements’ aftermaths. Lev Nachman discusses how the Sunflower Movement served as a catalyst for the formation of new political parties by movement actors disillusioned with the political establishment. Finally, Ngok Ma examines the role of new professional groups that were inspired by the “plebeian” awakening that was the Umbrella Movement.
The composition of the book and the arguments presented in the individual chapters are convincing. The contributions build nicely upon each other and together paint a rich picture of the two movements. While I find it difficult to find fault with this excellent edited volume, there are two minor areas that could have been improved. First, the editors could have discussed the rationale for the comparison in greater detail, as the comparability of the two cases might not be immediately apparent for non-area specialists (especially those trained in comparative political science). Second, the book could have benefitted from a more in-depth discussion of Hong Kong’s recent anti-national education law movement of 2019–2020, perhaps in the form of a separate chapter or an epilogue. However, this might be too much to ask for due to the timing of the publication. In any case, readers interested in the more recent protests will gain important insights into the developments that led up to them.
Overall, this is a superb edited volume that should be of interest to both area specialists and scholars of social movements, especially those interested in the cultural dimensions of protest. It provides an important record of how Hong Kongers and Taiwanese expressed their agency and creativity at critical junctures in their societies’ recent history.
Leon N. Kunz
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin