Taiwan’s student movement is a lesson in how democracy works

What lessons should Hong Kong draw from Taiwan's so-called Sunflower Movement? As ever, the usual suspects have concluded that Taiwan's democracy led to chaos, and they even claim that what happened in Taipei "proves" that democracy is not a suitable model for governing a Chinese society.

Let's start with "chaos"; it is quite correct to say that the Legislative Yuan has been occupied and was not able to operate, but it was business as usual for the rest of Taipei and, of course, the rest of Taiwan. To suggest that Taiwan is consumed by chaos is absurd.

Then there's the immensely insulting idea that, somehow, a Chinese society cannot handle democracy. If anything, the Taiwanese experience provides a direct rebuttal to this disparaging lie. Since the end of the Kuomintang dictatorship, successive elections have produced peaceful and profound changes of leadership at national, regional and city levels. It should also be noted that the transformed KMT has played an active part in the new democracy and achieved considerable success.

Moreover, since the advent of democracy, not only has the economy flourished, and grown at a pace never seen under the dictatorship, but the rule of law has been enhanced to the extent that an open judicial process had the ability to jail a former president for his misdeeds in office.

The student-led but not exclusively student-composed Sunflower Movement is first and foremost about accountability. It is spurred on by the notion that the KMT government is getting too close to the regime on the mainland and is working towards an unacceptable degree of integration.

We have seen learned articles explaining that the spur for this particular action, a trade pact, will bring considerable economic benefits to Taiwan. This is debatable, but assuming that this is so, it is all the more remarkable that a substantial proportion of Taiwan's population values liberty over economic advantages.