Editor's Note:

A group of students broke into the main executive building of the Taiwan government Sunday night, while protesters were occupying the Legislative Yuan for six days in a row to protest against the Cross-Strait Agreement on Trade in Services that advocates claim would help open the service markets and invest more freely between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. The Global Times invited two experts to share their views on the student movement.

Swei Duh-ching, associate professor with the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, National Chengchi University

The Cross-Strait Agreement on Trade in Services signed in June 2013 is aimed at opening Taiwan's service sectors more to the mainland, creating jobs and boosting the protracted sluggish economy. 

However, the student protesters are urging Ma Ying-jeou's government to scrap the trade pact. The representatives of the students are members of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Though not on a large scale, they violated relevant laws and regulations by storming the legislature and interfering with its normal work.

As a relatively naïve group, students are easily utilized by the pro-independence DPP. The general public is usually quite tolerant toward students and tends not to associate them with politics. This partly explains why radical pro-independence supporters have chosen students to lead the "occupy" movement.

In favor of economic opening-up and liberalization, the majority of people on the island expect Taiwan to integrate itself with other societies.

Now that Taipei has been a member of the WTO for more than a decade, it is now sparing no efforts to enter into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Furthermore, its trade pact with the New Zealand government stipulates a spectrum of items more open than those in the deal inked with the Chinese mainland.

It is obvious that a minority of Taiwanese take a double standard in opening up their markets and trading freely.

This prolonged conundrum can fundamentally be attributed to ideological difference, a prolonged conundrum which needs arduous efforts to bridge.

Media outlets of both Taiwan and the mainland have said that the student movement will probably compel Ma Ying-jeou to step down due to DPP's manipulation or even lead to chaos in the whole society, consequently wielding unpredictable influence over cross-Straits relations that have manifested signs of improvement. Nonetheless, this is hype.

This movement has been somehow exaggerated by media outlets and some public opinion. Taipei has been fraught with similar incidents, but generally speaking, these are just disturbances within an orderly democracy. Ma's government will adopt careful means to address the protest.

Wang Min, assistant research fellow with the Institute of Taiwan Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Protesters demanded Ma Ying-jeou's government "return" the service trade agreement to Beijing by claiming it would damage Taiwan's economy and leave it vulnerable to political pressure from Beijing. This is groundless.

As a major follow-up of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, this trade deal, according to which the mainland will open 80 service sectors to Taiwan and Taiwan will open 64 to the mainland, is designed to expand and enrich cross-Straits economic cooperation.

The student movement can be defined as a fierce but routine pro-independence activity instigated by the opposition DPP that breaks the constitutional framework and stymies the peaceful development of cross-Straits ties.

Students serve as a major force in the movement, mainly because they are bogged down in a quagmire of low salaries and a high unemployment rate, a phenomenon that has been shrouding the island for almost a decade. They tend to vent their anger at the authorities, especially when incited by the opposition party.

Another reason accounting for this movement is that several university professors take advantage of their expertise to misguide students, in an attempt to claim the trade deal will have a baleful impact on Taiwan's economy. In particular, Jang Show-ling, director of the Economics Department at National Taiwan University, unfairly said the market opening between the mainland and Taiwan was "asymmetrical."

Nonetheless, the movement is controllable because most Taiwanese support cross-Straits economic exchanges. And Ma's authorities should beef up effort to further unify departments within the ruling party by integrating various resources. The student movement also reflects that Taiwan is still suffering from an immature democracy with a slew of populism. And it takes time for students to grasp the real meaning of democracy.