The Wild Strawberry movement was considered the third largest student movement in Taiwan since the Wild Lily movement.
Taiwan News
Date: 2016/11/10
By: Wendy Lee , Taiwan News, Staff Writer
In November, 2008, when Beijing sent Chen Yun-lin, the chairman of China’s Association for Relations
across the Taiwan Strait to Taiwan for negotiations, a protest broke out in the nation over the then President Ma Ying-jeou’s pro-China policy.
Opposing Ma administration’s rapprochement with China, hundreds of students, scholars and intellectuals joined in on the demonstration in front of the Executive Yuan.
Starting out dogging Chen’s movement, the demonstration soon turned into a sit-in protesting police and executive misuse of power during Chen’s visit, and calling for government’s immediate response to the Big Three Demands: A public apology from President Ma and Premier Liu Chao-shiun; resignations of the directors of the police and national security agencies; review and amend the Assembly and Parade Law.
Meant to overturn people’s stereotype on the young generation as “strawberry generation” (self-involved, disengaged from politics, and cannot perform well under pressure due to over-protection by their parents’ generation), the movement highlighted the generational differences in terms of political preferences, especially their worries about engaging China economically. [FULL STORY]