Minds of the Movement
An ICNC blog on the people and power of civil resistance
Credit: Kuma Academy Facebook page.
Credit: Kuma Academy Facebook page.
Civil defense—one of many types of nonmilitary preparation against occupation and various societal threats—has partly risen recently in Taiwan out of efforts for civilians to have a greater say over defense against the Chinese threat. But civil defense efforts are importantly an outgrowth of Taiwan’s rich history of civil society and social movement activism, as expressed in historical moments such as the 2014 Sunflower Movement or the 1990 Wild Lily Movement, both primarily student-led. Many of the key leaders of civil defense efforts today trace their political histories back to the Sunflower Movement, whether this is movement leader Lin Fei-fan—who currently serves as Deputy Secretary-General of the National Security Council, or the initiators of key civil defense efforts such as disinformation expert and human rights activist Puma Shen.
Even so, civil defense sometimes brings together an unusual grouping of individuals. For example, civil defense trainings organized by Taiwan’s premier organization active in this field, the Kuma Academy, often see participation by police officers and retired veterans… not exactly the types you expect to see at street protests. This may help address the societal cohesion challenges that Taiwan faces. This article presents civil defense as conceived and practiced in Taiwan currently, describes the political context and difficulties, and examines Chinese reactions. I follow up on this primer in a second post here [[COMING SOON!]], which provides more detail about the specific civil defense preparation efforts, which currently emphasize crisis preparation for various reasons.
Historical and social context for the emergence of civil defense
Taiwan has long had identity issues. After its defeat in the Chinese Civil War (1927-1949), the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) fled to Taiwan in 1949, with the aim of using Taiwan as a base to retake the Chinese mainland. About 10% of Taiwanese today, including myself, are descended from those who came to Taiwan with the KMT. The rest are from prior waves of migration from China in past centuries or are Indigenous.
When the KMT arrived in Taiwan, this was at the end of the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945). The KMT saw Taiwanese as having been tainted by the decades of Japanese rule and in need of “resinicization”, imposing the White Terror—a decades-long period of martial law marked by political violence against dissidents who resisted the KMT’s authoritarian one-party rule, stretching from 1949 to 1987.
Fast forward to the 21st century. In the wake of the 2014 Sunflower Movement—a student movement among the largest in Taiwanese history, in which I myself was a participant—the pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) swept to power. The DPP emerged in the past decades from Taiwan’s democracy movement, tracing its origins to dissidents once jailed and murdered by the KMT. But today, Taiwan faces escalating military threats from China. It is in this context that the civil defense movement has arisen in Taiwan.
Civil defense in a post-authoritarian context
As foreshadowed above, the times in Taiwan have created strange bedfellows and shifting alliances. For decades, the DPP used to resist the military, which was the KMT’s political enforcer. Now, the DPP seeks to improve the image of the military in order to shore it up as a bulwark against China. As part of the shifting tides, the KMT has gone from resisting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to becoming its domestic political proxy in Taiwan–perhaps believing that through facilitating the political unification of Taiwan and China, the KMT could reclaim the political privileges that party members once had in Taiwanese society but lost in the process of democratization. After all, a return to CCP rule—even if that means a loss of Taiwan’s hard-won democracy—means a return to an authoritarian political system that the KMT is more familiar with and may prefer. The KMT thus once again represents an internal threat to Taiwan’s de facto independence.
Yet the military has image problems due to its authoritarian past. For one, the military was long a bastion for the KMT’s China-centered state nationalism, with its leadership consisting entirely of “waishengren”—those who, like me, are descended from those who came to Taiwan with the KMT. The military today does not enjoy high levels of trust, especially following the 2013 death of cadet Hung Chung-hsiu in what was believed an attempted cover-up. Hung’s death led to a series of protests that were an important precedent of the Sunflower Movement. The popular belief that the military attempted to deny responsibility for Hung’s death was an uncomfortable reminder of how the military covered up its killings during the authoritarian period.
And the distrust in Taiwanese society is a two-way street. Even in defending Taiwan from Chinese threats, the military still takes the view that civilians should stay in their lane and keep out of the way of professional soldiers. But perhaps tides are shifting, yet again: Last year saw the appointment of the first civilian Minister of Defense in over a decade, as an attempt to enact wide-ranging reforms.
China’s response
China has not taken kindly to Taiwan’s civil defense efforts. China has signaled its displeasure by naming three individuals associated with civil defense, including Lin and Shen, to its list of most-wanted Taiwanese independence separatists. The Kuma Academy is the only organization to have been named to the list.
In addition, China has sought to paint efforts to bolster Taiwan’s defense as inviting war. It has framed civil defense as warmongering, with the suggestion that training for possible war scenarios will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. These reactions have led the Taiwanese government to frame civil defense as crisis preparedness and proceed with more caution with regard to certain aspects of civil defense that evoke military imagery.
Instead, resilience-building efforts have begun emphasizing preparedness for wartime scenarios but also natural disasters. Taiwan is, after all, dangerously prone to earthquakes and typhoons, as in the 1999 Jiji earthquake that killed 2,415 and injured 11,305, or Typhoon Morakot in 2009, which killed close to 700.
This is an approach that Taiwan has learned greatly from Ukraine, with exchanges between Taiwanese and Ukrainian society in past years occurring as a means of skills-sharing on issues ranging from how to combat disinformation from a foreign adversary to civil defense. Framing civil defense as equally about disaster relief as about wartime scenarios is a means of altering the optics and drawing in everyday individuals who might not want to participate in training framed as preparation for war.
"All resistance is futile..."
Above all, civil defense may at the end of the day be an effort at shoring up the willingness of Taiwanese to take part in everyday acts of resistance. Today, China still lacks the capacity to take Taiwan. That is, although China would no doubt triumph if it were willing to commit enough lives and material to an invasion and occupation of Taiwan, the current political leadership may not be able to maintain control of society through the course of an event that would lead to global economic cataclysm, international pressure on China even short of military intervention, and tens of thousands–if not hundreds of thousands–of Chinese casualties. Hence it is easier for China to convince Taiwan that resistance is futile. Indeed, the only way that China can take Taiwan with minimal losses is if Taiwan does not resist.
This is where civil defense and civil deterrence enter the equation. There are many means of resistance short of taking up arms. Yet there are also methods of nonviolent resistance to learn that go beyond planning out where to take shelter with your family if conflict breaks out, learning how to make a tourniquet for your neighbor, and CPR training. What balance is Taiwan striking right now along the spectrum of violent resistance, nonviolent resistance and disaster preparedness in their defense preparations? Check out my follow-up post here. [[COMING SOON!]]
