When Taiwan was under the authoritarian rule of former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), speaking about the history of the 228 Incident of 1947 was taboo. Not until the 1990s, when Taiwan democratized could it be shared with the public.
The history began to unfold, and the wrongs suffered by victims and their families began to be redressed. With more studies investigating the 228 Incident, its outline has become clear.
However, some descendants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party-state system have found it unacceptable. They have tried to retell the story, framing the 228 Incident as a Japanese scheme, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) instigation or a riot organized by a “mob” of Imperial Japan.
It is not difficult to debunk their fallacious hypotheses. If the 228 Incident were mobilized by Japan, the CCP or a mob, the KMT would not have bothered to conceal its crimes for 40 years.
Many people are fond of nitpicking inessential matters of the 228 Incident, without paying attention to the following key issues:
After the end of World War II, Taiwanese, especially the social elite, looked forward to welcoming China. The nation-wide anticipation of the “motherland” was entirely different from its resistance against Japanese colonizers in 1895. The question, then, is how this turned into a tremendous clash after only one year and four months. Why did Taiwanese become disenchanted with the Chinese regime, and how?
Taiwan was ruled by then-governor general Chen Yi (陳儀), and he was referred to as the “new” governor general of Taiwan. The moniker speaks to some key issues: From 1945 to 1947, how did officials from China rule Taiwan? How disciplined were Chinese troops? What was the social order like?
Taiwan was called the “land of rice and sugar,” but after the end of WWII, society had to deal with shortages of both commodities.
In 1947, Taiwan’s industrial production index had decreased to more than half of the pre-1945 index.
This begs the question of what the 228 Incident was essentially about. Was the public forced to rebel against the government? Was it a conflict between ethnic groups? Was it a communist revolt or a cultural collision?
On Feb. 27, 1947, the 228 Incident erupted. Although the situation had been controlled by March 6, Chiang Kai-shek insisted on sending troops to “appease” Taiwanese. Did the so-called “appeasement” result in massacre?
How did the 228 Incident affect Taiwan’s political structure and social sentiment? History provides some answers.
In 1946, more than 1,180 Taiwanese registered as candidates in the Taiwan Provincial Senate Election, competing for 30 seats in the assembly. After the 228 Incident, in the 1951 First Taiwan Interim Provincial Assembly Election, only 140 candidates registered for an assembly of 55 seats. We must ask why.
Chinese archives and documents — such as Testimonies of Chinese Intellectuals Before and After the 228 (二二八前後中國知識人的見證), and more than 50 memoirs about the 228 Incident — provide great sources to understand the past. It is not possible to try to retell the narrative.
There is one final question: Will the 228 Incident be repeated? Taiwan should have learned from what happened 76 years ago. The CCP’s threat — “leave the island intact, forget the people” — should keep the nation alert.
Lee Hsiao-feng is an honorary professor at National Taipei University of Education.
Translated by Liu Yi-hung
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number