Students on the floor of parliament
Published 8 October 2026
The Sunflower occupation of March 2014 makes sense only after the trade framework that came before it. Taipei and Beijing signed the Cross-Straits Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement at Chongqing on Tuesday, June 29, 2010, through the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits. The English text on the worldjpn.net archive carries a note that the Chinese copy is the authentic one.
Article 1 sets four objectives: strengthen economic, trade and investment cooperation; further liberalize trade in goods and services; build investment protection mechanisms; and expand areas of cooperation. Article 2 lists the measures, which include gradually reducing or eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers on "a substantial majority of goods," reducing restrictions on "a large number of sectors" in services, and protecting investment and facilitating trade. Articles 3 and 4 have the two sides start consultations on a goods agreement and a services agreement within six months of entry into force, and Articles 7 and 8 set up an Early Harvest Program for goods (Annex I) and for services (Annex IV) to start within six months of entry into force. The treaty text says the services agreement was meant to follow. It does not name the 2013 pact, and the link to the 2014 protests rests on the news accounts below, not on this text.
The Mainland Affairs Council has published tables that show what the early harvest did. They come from an ECFA section of a larger report PDF last modified July 9, 2026, built from Taiwan customs (Ministry of Finance), PRC customs and the Bureau of Foreign Trade, with trade data to the first quarter of 2026 and financial-services information to April 30. The table labels its partner mainland China; it is not the mainland-plus-Hong-Kong total used in the annual trade report. The goods early harvest began tariff cuts on January 1, 2011, services early-harvest measures took effect at the same time, and from January 1, 2013 all early-harvest products were at zero tariff. The list covers agricultural items such as oncidium orchids, enoki mushrooms, bananas, oranges, lemons, honeydew melons, dragon fruit, tea, grouper, mullet, saury and soft-shelled turtle eggs.
Taiwan's exports to the mainland, all goods, rose from US$85.12 billion in 2011 to a peak of US$125.90 billion in 2021, according to the same tables. In between they ran 82.59 in 2012, 84.12 in 2013, 84.71 in 2014, 73.27 in 2015, 73.73 in 2016, 88.75 in 2017, 96.50 in 2018, 91.79 in 2019 and 102.45 in 2020. After the 2021 peak they fell to 121.11 in 2022 and 95.73 in 2023, a drop of 20.94%, then recovered to 96.98 in 2024 and 100.08 in 2025. January to March 2026 was 26.13, up 20.77% from the same quarter a year earlier. By this arithmetic, exports to the mainland in 2025 were about 19 percent above 2011 and about 20 percent below the 2021 peak.
The early-harvest goods are a shrinking part of that. Early-harvest exports were US$17.98 billion in 2011, peaked at US$25.23 billion in 2021, and fell to US$20.50 billion in 2022, US$15.78 billion in 2023, US$14.91 billion in 2024 and US$13.12 billion in 2025. As a share of all exports to the mainland, that is about 21 percent in 2011 and about 13 percent in 2025. The tables do not state the share, so it is derived arithmetic. The tables give the estimated cumulative tariff reduction as US$10.447 billion on Taiwan customs figures and US$9.366 billion on PRC customs figures, through 2024. The two differ by about US$1.1 billion, and the source notes that the second converts PRC customs data at exchange rates. Annual savings peaked near US$1.07 billion on Taiwan's estimate and fell to US$346 million in 2024. The 2025 savings cells read "N/A," so no 2025 figure appears.
According to the council's tables, trade ran the other way too. Imports from the mainland, all goods, were US$44.10 billion in 2011 and US$91.71 billion in 2025, about 2.08 times as much. Early-harvest goods imports were US$4.97 billion in 2011 and US$8.75 billion in 2025, and the tariff saved by Taiwan importers was about US$1.19 billion cumulatively through 2024. On these tables Taiwan sold the mainland US$100.1 billion in 2025 and bought US$91.7 billion, a surplus of about US$8.4 billion against US$41.0 billion in 2011. The two tables come from different customs sets, and a note says statistics changed to a "general trade system" basis from 2014, so earlier years are not strictly comparable and the surplus trend is indicative, not exact.
Use of the ECFA certificate of origin tells the same story from the exporters' side. Certificates issued were 38,234 in 2011 (US$6.48 billion), 65,525 in 2012, 144,672 in 2021 (US$16.02 billion), 115,531 in 2022, 104,220 in 2023 (US$9.57 billion), 61,780 in 2024 (US$4.65 billion), 24,952 in 2025 (US$1.31 billion), and 5,485 in the first quarter of 2026 (US$308 million). Cumulatively that is 1,525,409 certificates worth US$203.26 billion. The table gives 2012 as US$46.32 billion, far above the surrounding years, and carries a note that firms can amend or withdraw certificates within 180 days so numbers move, so no trend is drawn from 2012. The drop in certificates from the 2021 peak to 2025 is about 83 percent. Put plainly: ECFA's tariff cuts were real, with about US$10 billion saved by exporters over 2011 to 2024 on Taiwan's estimate, but the early-harvest share declined and exports to the mainland were still about US$100 billion in 2025, so the economic tie outlasted the political appetite for deals.
Services opened too. As of April 30, 2026, Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission had approved 16 domestic banks to set up branches and subsidiaries on the mainland. Twenty-five branches, 9 sub-branches and 5 subsidiary banks were open, with 4 representative offices, and 3 mainland bank branches were open in Taiwan with 2 representative offices. The PRC lifted the old QFII quota in September 2019, and 22 Taiwanese investment trust firms and 1 securities firm held QFII status. Insurance, film and other sectors are not covered here.
Tuesday night, March 18, 2014, hundreds of young Taiwanese climbed into the Legislative Yuan in Taipei. The trigger came a day earlier, when Kuomintang legislator Chang Ching-chung announced that the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement, signed in Shanghai in June 2013, had been "fully reviewed" and would go to a vote. Bickering among legislators had in fact prevented the review from starting. The students stayed 585 hours, until 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 10. They also briefly broke into the Executive Yuan on March 23. The Diplomat's J. Michael Cole noted that the pact's expected effect was only about 0.03 percent of GDP growth over ten years, while the movement raised national security, free speech and jobs. President Ma Ying-jeou's government insisted the pact be ratified "as is" by June, warning that failure would hurt Taiwan's chance to join multilateral trade groups such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
A rally on March 30 drew about 350,000 people. Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, himself a Kuomintang member, then visited the occupiers and promised not to call another bipartisan review of the pact until an oversight mechanism was in place. The party accused him of betrayal, and the movement took it as goodwill and set its exit for April 10, exactly 35 years after the Taiwan Relations Act became law. Leaders Lin Fei-fan and Chen Wei-ting gave the last speech, and a brass band played "Island's Sunrise." Both leaders faced possible prosecution with sentences up to seven years. The agreement stayed stalled. Sunflowers, handed out by supporters, gave the movement its name.
The Taipei Times timeline of April 11, 2014 gives the sequence from the first day. On Monday, March 17, in a joint session of eight committees, the Kuomintang legislator announced that the review of the cross-strait services trade pact was over "30 seconds into" it, and said the agreement would go to the floor. Student and civic groups and the opposition reacted angrily. On Tuesday, March 18, after an evening rally outside, hundreds of students stormed the chamber and barricaded themselves in with furniture, and overnight police attempts to evict them failed.
The first demands were Premier Jiang Yi-huah's resignation, an apology from President Ma Ying-jeou, and return of the pact to item-by-item committee review. By March 23 the students had issued four demands: a civic conference on constitutional government, a legal mechanism to monitor cross-strait agreements, no action on the pact until the oversight law was enacted, and a pledge by legislators to work on that law first. On March 21 Ma called a meeting with Vice President Wu Den-yih, Jiang and Speaker Wang Jin-pyng to end the standoff, but it was canceled after Wang excused himself by letter. On March 22 Jiang became the first senior official to meet the protesters. Student leader Lin Fei-fan of National Taiwan University and others demanded he first promise to withdraw the pact, and Jiang refused preconditions. On March 23 Ma held an international press conference stressing the pact's importance to Taiwan's economy and efforts to avoid marginalization, and the movement said he showed no sincerity.
What the occupation changed was a mood. Before it, closer economic ties with the mainland were the Kuomintang's argument for itself. After it, the argument had a cost. The consequences of that mood arrived at the polls within the year.
On Saturday, November 29, 2014 Taiwan held its "nine-in-one" local elections, with 11,130 seats, about 18 million registered voters and 20,000 candidates. CSIS reported that the Democratic Progressive Party won 13 of the 22 cities and counties, the Kuomintang fell from 15 to 6 and independents took the remaining 3. The popular vote was 47.56 percent for the DPP and 40.7 percent for the Kuomintang, on a turnout of 67.59 percent. In Taipei, Ko Wen-je, a 55-year-old emergency doctor and surgeon running as an independent backed by the DPP, took 57.1 percent against the Kuomintang's Sean Lien, son of former vice president Lien Chan, at 40.8 percent. He was the first non-Kuomintang mayor in 16 years, according to the Guardian. In Taichung the DPP's Lin Chia-lung beat incumbent Jason Hu, mayor for 13 years. In New Taipei City, Eric Chu of the Kuomintang was re-elected by under 25,000 votes, a margin of 1.28 percentage points.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah resigned hours after the polls closed, the same Jiang the students had demanded resign in March. Ma Ying-jeou said, "I must express apologies to the Nationalist party and its supporters for making everyone disappointed... I won't avoid responsibility," and said he would offer a party reform plan. Why the party lost is analysts' reading. CSIS said the races "focused primarily on domestic issues," such as property prices, falling incomes, inequality and food safety, with the China factor likely less important but possibly relevant, and linked the result to public skepticism about Ma's economic agenda. It also said the pact "sparked mass student-led protests and a three-week occupation of Taiwan's parliament." The Guardian quoted Academia Sinica's Hsu Szu-chien: "This is a very strong message, not only to the KMT administration, but also to Beijing." Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Ma Xiaoguang said via Xinhua, "We hope compatriots across the Strait will cherish hard-won fruits of cross-strait relations." The Guardian also said Ma had signed "21 trade deals with China" and that the March occupation ultimately blocked its ratification. The figure of 21 is a news count that was not cross-checked against a primary list. Looking ahead, CSIS wrote in 2014 that Tsai Ing-wen, then DPP chair, had lost to Ma in 2012 by 6 points, and that the local results would be read as momentum for 2016.
On Saturday, November 7, 2015 Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping met in Singapore for about an hour, on neutral ground at a hotel, the first top-level contact since the 1949 split, "66 years ago" in the AP's phrase, with a handshake against a plain yellow backdrop. Richard Bush of Brookings wrote on November 4, 2015 that the format used "leader of the Mainland and the leader of Taiwan" as titles to avoid the status question. The ROC side said there would be no agreements and no joint declaration, Taiwan's elections were set for January 16, 2016 and the Kuomintang was "struggling." Bush added that Singapore was also where senior figures of Taiwan and the mainland held a "path-breaking meeting in 1993," which Ma helped facilitate as deputy chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council.
Tsai Ing-wen took office on Friday, May 20, 2016. On the 1992 talks she said: "In 1992, the two institutions representing each side across the Strait (SEF & ARATS), through communication and negotiations, arrived at various joint acknowledgements and understandings... I respect this historical fact." She did not use the words "1992 Consensus" in that passage, only the "historical fact" of the talks. She named four "existing political foundations": the fact of the 1992 talks, the existing ROC constitutional order, the outcomes of over twenty years of interactions, and "the democratic principle and prevalent will of the people of Taiwan." Her government would conduct cross-Strait affairs under the ROC Constitution and the Act Governing Relations Between the People of Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, and she said she was elected under the ROC Constitution and so responsible for the sovereignty and territory of the ROC. Beijing responded by cutting off high-level communication with Taipei, citing her refusal to endorse the principle of a single Chinese nation, and it has not restored it. Her government also announced the New Southbound Policy as the basis for broader links with ASEAN and India.