Not a Peasant Movement: The Livelihood Struggles of the Taiwanese Labouring Population under the Broken Promise of High-tech Development

In contrast to popular opinion, this paper suggests that recent protests against the Taiwanese government's expropriation of farmland for high-tech development in Taiwan do not constitute a peasant movement. Based on Karl Polanyi's double-movement thesis and Ching Kwan Lee's analysis of workers' uprisings in the context of market reform, this paper shows that the local cause of such a mobilization is the labouring population's struggle to maintain a livelihood against increasing economic and employment insecurity. Moreover, the intensification of market despotism, economic insecurity and the relocation of firms to China have broken the various promises offered by high-tech development. As a result, local protestors have begun to question the necessity of expropriating farmland to make way for the construction of new science industrial parks.