DRAFT- NOT FOR CITATION OR FURTHER CIRCULATION Rising Local Identity and Opposition to Globalization in Taiwan and Hong Kong: a comparison of the Sunflower Movement and the Umbrella Movement ISA Asia-Pacific Conference 2016, Hong Kong April 25, 2016 Syaru Shirley Lin The Chinese University of Hong Kong [email protected] ABSTRACT Recent years have seen an increasing number of protests in both Taiwan and Hong Kong. While the details of the protests have varied, they have reflected a discontent with the rapid pace of integration with China, itself a facet of China’s globalization, and the consolidation of powerful local identities and a weakening of previous identifications with China. Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement in March 2014 protested against further economic liberalization with China, specifically the passage of a Services Trade Agreement. Soon after, Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in September 2014 sought to persuade Beijing to modify its formula for nominating and electing Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2017 and to air grievances arising from economic integration with mainland China. The Taiwan government yielded to the students’ demands to delay the passage of the trade pact and to draft a mechanism to monitor future negotiations with China, while both Hong Kong and Beijing adamantly refused to amend the electoral proposal. The two governments responded to the students differently because of societal, institutional and external factors. An examination of these factors provides both explanations of the outcomes of the student movements and forecasts about government-societal relations in both regions. In both Hong Kong and Taiwan, a new generation of youth is emerging that feels disenfranchised and increasingly bitter. In a 2015 poll measuring problems in four Chinese polities – China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan – Hong Kong and Taiwan were the worst in terms of “generational mistrust.”1 With economic integration with China deepening in both places, the younger generation feels disconnected from its elders and is characterized by a strong sense of local identity. This strong sense of local identity is related to its commitment to a distinctive set of economic, political and social values. Opposing policies they believe threaten their values, youths in both places are engaging in social and political activism, Their high degree of dissatisfaction with existing political structures and the rise of local identity in both regions are both attributable to greater social and economic integration with China, which has been associated with greater inequality and loss of job opportunity especially for the young. In response, Beijing has used both soft and hard strategies to push back the youngsters and their supporters, but these strategies have backfired. In 2014, young people, particularly students, led the Sunflower Movement (SM) in Taiwan and the Umbrella Movement (UM) in Hong Kong, and organized social protests that clashed with government authorities on other issues, including textbook changes and education reforms viewed as promoting Chinese identity and costly infrastructure projects intended to facilitate integration with China. This anti-establishment culture among the young of anti-establishment is intense and dynamic and has at times become violent. In addition to engaging in social protests, the younger generation has also become actively involved in electoral politics in order to bring about policy change. In the last two years, young activists have organized new political parties, competed for political office, and have launched movements supporting non-traditional candidates that will surely affect the future of both regions. This article examines polls, surveys and primary material to understand these new trends in Hong Kong and Taiwan and to examine their implications for government-societal relations. Rise of Local Identity in Hong Kong and Taiwan Young people in both regions exhibit a distinctly more local sense of identity than the elder generations. There are many ways to measure identity, but in both places, the longest and most consistent set of the data measure self- identification. For the last two decades, polls and surveys have been tracking whether people in both regions identify themselves as “Chinese,” or adopt an alternative local identity. In addition to self-identification, one’s preference for the region’s political structure and status can also reflect one’s identity. In Hong Kong, support for the “one country two systems” (OCTS) arrangement between Hong Kong and Beijing reflects an identity more favorable to being “Chinese.” Similarly, in Taiwan, support for unification with China is often associated with a “Chinese” identity.2 For the residents of Hong Kong, there was always a sense of local identity during the British colonial era between 1846 to 1997. People living in Hong Kong took pride in being part of a more advanced and free society compared to China, and in speaking Cantonese, rather than Mandarin.3 But both the British and Chinese governments sought to depoliticize the city and avoided mobilizing strong national sentiment in order to maintain stability. This local identity, therefore, was primarily social and cultural and not politically charged. 1 Since the handover, a local identity has steadily grown. By comparison, a primarily Chinese identity sometimes gains strength as a result of specific events, such as the Olympics, but does not appear to grow more appealing over time. In December 2015, more than eighteen years after the handover to Beijing, the longest time-data survey conducted by the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong (POP) found that nearly 68 percent still saw themselves as having primarily a Hong Kong identity, either a “Hong Konger in China” or simply a “Hong Konger.” This was an increase from the 60 percent in 1997. Only 31 percent called themselves a “Chinese in Hong Kong” or a “Chinese,” a decline from 39 percent in 1997, and a big drop from the peak of 52 percent during the 2008 Olympics. Among the younger generation, the change in identity is even more notable. Despite increasingly China-focused education since 1997, 86 percent of people under 29 years old identified themselves as having primarily a Hong Kong identity. Only 13 percent of the young people identified themselves as primarily Chinese, down from 32 percent in 1997 (see Figure 1).4 Among the younger generation, those who claim to be exclusively “Hong Kongers” (56 percent) outnumber those who claim to be exclusively “Chinese” (8 percent) by seven times. In 1997, this ratio was merely three to one. A 2016 study by the Hong Kong Government’s Central Policy Unit (CPU) focusing on young people showed that 84% of the people between age 15-35 felt exclusively “Hong Konger” rather than either “Chinese” or “both Chinese and Hong Konger.”5 These results have been corroborated by several other university surveys and polls.6 FIGURE 1 (蛪獤觊獨藨ݶ──̿詂჈Ո̀ҁೲ稞现ೲଙ请奲獨 Ethnic Identity – Hongkonger (per poll, by age group) (8/1997 - 12/2015) 18 - 29 30+ 碉誢 Overall 80 % 70 % 60 % 50 % Percentage 40 % ጯ獤穉 30 % 20 % 10 % 9-14/12/2005 6/8/1999 21-22/6/2011 1-2/2/2000 7-9/12/2001 14-17/12/2012 3-7/12/2015 21-25/9/2000 8-12/6/2007 9-12/12/2008 9-13/6/2010 29/9/1998 2-5/9/2002 6-9/12/2004 6-12/6/2014 1-5/6/2001 15/4/1999 13-18/6/2003 12-13/3/2002 26-27/8/1997 10-13/6/2013 26-27/10/1999 11-14/12/2007 28-29/10/1997 13-18/12/2002 3-4/6/1998 12-20/12/2011 8-9/12/1997 6-7/4/2000 13-15/6/2006 22-24/6/1998 10-14/12/2003 4-12/12/2000 23-24/9/1997 13-16/12/2010 21/12/1998 13-15/12/1999 6-8/6/2005 10-16/12/2014 13-21/9/2001 8-13/6/2009 13-20/6/2012 8/6/1999 9-12/12/2013 7-8/6/2000 6-12/12/2006 14/8/1998 4-5/6/2002 15-18/6/2015 11-13/6/2008 8-9/2/1999 1-4/3/2003 7-11/6/2004 8-11/12/2009 22/3-2/4/2001 藲礚෭๗ Date of survey Source: POP, December 2015. Furthermore, as it relates to support for OCTS, POP surveys show that the percentage of people lacking confidence in OCTS has grown from 18 percent in 2 1997 to 50 percent in 2016, with the rise more prominent in the last decade.7 Compared to the elder generations, young people are much more dissatisfied with the Central Government and with the implementation of OCTS. When asked if they were satisfied with the way the Central Government implements the OCTS in Hong Kong, 45 percent of respondents aged 15 to 24 and 46 percent of respondents aged 25 to 39 said they were “dissatisfied” compared with 22 percent of respondents 60 or above and 31 percent of respondents 40-59.8 In the latest CPU survey, when asked about their views on OCTS, 71 percent of the respondents preferred to maintain a distance from the mainland compared with 27 percent who wanted to strengthen the tie.9 When asked about trust in the Central Government and the Hong Kong Government, the trend appears to be the same. According to polls by both POP and CPU, more than twice as many young respondents mistrust the Central Government and the Hong Kong Government compared to the older respondents.10 Furthermore, a majority of these younger generations believes that Hong Kong should be much more autonomous than at present, a larger proportion than the elder generations.11 In sum, whether measured by self-identification, or trust in OCTS, or desire for autonomy from the mainland, young Hong Kongers are distinctly more focused on Hong Kong as their community, rather than China as a nation, and more dissatisfied with the local establishment, and more mistrustful of the central Chinese government.