Democratic Values and Democratic Support in East Asia
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Democratic Values and Democratic Support in East Asia Kuan-chen Lee [email protected] Postdoctoral fellow, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica Judy Chia-yin Wei [email protected] Postdoctoral fellow, Center for East Asia Democratic Studies, National Taiwan University Stan Hok-Wui Wong [email protected] Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University Karl Ho [email protected] Associate Professor, School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas Harold D. Clarke [email protected] Ashbel Smith Professor, School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas Introduction In East Asia, 2014 was an epochal year for transformation of social, economic and political orders. Students in Taiwan and Hong Kong each led a large scale social movement in 2014 that not only caught international attention, but also profoundly influenced domestic politics afterwards. According to literature of political socialization, it is widely assumed that the occurrences of such a huge event will produce period effects which bring socio-political attitudinal changes for all citizens, or at least, cohort effects, which affect political views for a group of people who has experienced the event in its formative years. While existing studies have accumulated fruitful knowledge in the socio-political structure of the student-led movement, the profiles of the supporters in each movement, as well as the causes and consequences of the student demonstrations in the elections (Ho, 2015; Hawang, 2016; Hsiao and Wan, 2017; Stan, forthcoming; Ho et al., forthcoming), relatively few studies pay attention to the link between democratic legitimacy and student activism. Nor do they assess the impact of the student movements on public attitudes towards democracy. Without an impact evaluation, we do not know too much about what have been changed after the student-led movements. Do the student movements have any effects on public attitudes towards democracy? If so, do these movements enhance or undermine commitment to democracy? How do we explain the impacts of student demonstration on democracy if a contradictory effect is found? To fill this gap, we develop a research strategy that utilizes two waves of survey from four societies, i.e., Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore, conducted by Asian Barometer Survey (ABS) to compare the before-and-after changes in democratic attitudes for the group that student movement occurred to the before-and-after changes in outcomes for the group that student movement did not happen. The results show that student protests have an effect on cultivating intrinsic democratic values but have a negative effect on popular support for democracy, in comparison to societies where no student movement occurred. Additional analyses on the validity of the results also confirm our findings. We argue that the positive effect on democratic values is associated with the fact that the student movement is driven by a common desire of more attachment to democratic principles, in turn strengthening citizens’ commitment to liberal democratic values. On the other hand, however, the growing skepticism about democracy as a preferred political system is attributable to polarized public opinion on the occupation movement and a deep-rooted traditional social setting that downgrades the current political system to a flawed democracy particularly when student activism is costly. 1 The remainder of this article proceeds as follows: we first briefly describe the Sunflower and the Umbrella movements and discuss the similarities and differences between them. We then review existing studies with regard to possible effects of student- led movements. Next, we describe the data, outline our research design, and report the results of the empirical analyses. Further explanations and interpretations of the findings are followed by a section of discussion. Finally, the conclusion summarizes our assessment of the effects of student movements and discusses implications for democratic legitimacy in East Asian societies. Political Consequences of the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements This section discusses the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. The first two parts briefly elaborate the two movements: why and how it took place and ended. The next is the distinction of the two movements. The last is the mutual characteristics of them. The Sunflower Movement took place on March 18, 2014, in Taiwan. It arose from the legislative efforts of Taiwan’s ruling party, Kuomintang/KMT in favor of the Cross- Strait Services Trade Agreement (CSSTA) with China. In a March 17 committee session in Legislature in which the bill was being reviewed, KMT legislator Ching-Chung Chang arbitrarily announced that the review process had ended and the bill would be sent to a plenary session in 30 seconds. The process was regarded as controversial, legally questionable, and not transparent (Rowen, 2015). On March 18, student political groups including the Black Island Youth Front, the Anti-Media Monopoly Youth Alliance, and the Democratic Front Against Under Table Cross-Strait Trade in Service Agreement occupied the building of Legislature Chamber. Over the next few days, more and more students came to the legislative building to participate sit-ins. In addition, there were sit- ins around KMT’s headquarters on March 22 to 23 and occupation of the Executive Yuan on March 23. On March 30, around 500,000 students attended a demonstration and protest in front of the Office of the President. As times went by, some counterforces showed up. A public opinion poll conducted on April 3 by TVBS Poll Center indicated that only 26% of the respondents still supported the continual occupation of the Legislative Yuan. Eventually the government agreed with students’ appeal-the legalization of legislation to monitor future cross-strait agreement, and the students withdrew from the Legislature Yuan on April 10. The Sunflower Movement lasted for 24 days and ended on April 10 (Hsiao and Wan, 2018). The 2014 Umbrella/Occupy Central Movement in Hong Kong lasted for 79 days 2 that is longer than the Sunflower Movement. It had attracted global concern around the issue of the democratization of Hong Kong. The Umbrella Movement mainly appeals for genuine universal suffrage for selecting the Chief Executive. Although the decision by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) regarding the method of electing the Chief Executive in 2017 seemed to be the driver of the protests, the long- term conflict between Hong Kong residents and the Chinese government is also an important factor.1 That conflict is mainly about whether democracy in Hong Kong should exist (Biao, 2015). On September 22, the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) started to boycott classes for one week to protest against NPC’s decision. The rallies gathered in front of the Government Headquarters (GH) in Central. In addition to HKFS, the Occupy Central, which had been planned one year ago, joined the protest rallies. The planned Occupy Central movement evolved into the unplanned Umbrella Movement eventually (Lee, 2015). The movement started from September 26 to December 15 in 2014. Protesters mainly occupied key roads and places, such as Admiralty, Central, Causeway Bay, Wanchai, Mongkok, Yau Ma Tei, and Tsim Sha Tsui. On Sep. 28, the police used pepper spray and fired tear gas to disperse protesters. There were almost 100 people injured and 89 people arrested (Lee, So, Leung, 2015; Hsiao and Wan, 2018). Like Sunflower movement, there were some counterforces such as pro-establishment camp protesting against the Umbrella Movement. The Umbrella Movement ended on December 15 when the police evicted the last sites of occupation. Although both Sunflower and Umbrella Movements were initiated by students and protesters are mainly students and the youth, there are some differences between them. The most important three differences are issues, objectives, and achievements. Sunflower Movement mainly centers on economic issues (CSSTA) while Umbrella Movement focuses on issue of political reform (the method of selecting the Chief Executive). The objectives of Sunflower Movement are the legal and open process of legislation of future cross-strait agreement and allow the opposition party to participate in the legislation process; the objectives of Umbrella Movement is the petition for ‘genuine universal 1 The decision of the NPCSC claims that the chief executive should be the one ‘who loves the country and loves Hong Kong.’ This means that China only allows candidates it prefers in the nomination committee to stand in the popular election. In this sense, pro-China/establishment candidates are more likely than pro- democracy candidates to get nominated for the Chief Executive candidacy (Lee, 2015;Wei, 2017). In addition advocating for the democratic election of the Chief Executive, the movement also appealed for the abolition of functional constituencies and the implementation of universal suffrage in Legislative Council elections. Please refer to Article 45 and Annex I of the Basic Law for the method of selection of the Chief Executive (http://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclawtext/index.html) and Xinhua News Agency, “Full Text of NPC Decision on Universal Suffrage for HKSAR Chief Selection”, August 31, 2014. 3 suffrage’ of the Chief Executive. Finally, most of pundits and commentators argue that the Sunflower Movement succeeded because the government responded to protestors’ appeals while the Umbrella Movement was considered a failure (Chan, 2014:578; Hsiao and Wan, 2018). Despite the differences between two movements, they have some mutual characteristics. As mentioned in the last paragraph, the initiators are students and proponents are students and young people. Moreover, the two movements mainly used social media to mobilize students and young people (Liao, Chen, Wu, and Hwan, 2014; Rowen, 2015). Although purposes of the two movements are different, they are somewhat associated with democratic values and China impact (Hsiao and Wan, 2018).