Intro

• Background

When WW2 ended in 1945, many Taiwanese people were quite enthusiastic about “coming back to motherland” due to years of struggle to gain regional autonomous status under Japan’s provisional government and the harsher administration Japanization during wartime. They believed the ROC government, a supposed cultural relative, would understand them better, respect them more, and fit their needs better.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

The ROC government back was still an authoritarian, de facto one-party regime lead by KMT, with Chiang Kai Shek as its highest leader. Regarding China as their core interest, this government had little to no interest in properly ruling Taiwan, an already developed and semi-industrialized region. So the KMT treated it as more of a hen that can be squeezed for golden eggs—they pushed a state-controlled market centered around Chinese officials and looted the existing industry (mainly sugar, which Taiwan was among the largest exporters of in the world at the time). The mismanagement triggered massive inflation and nearly caused an artificial famine due to the sky-rocketing price of foods and shortages in other commodities since most resources had been seized indiscriminately to be redistributed to China.

Worse, the provisional government officials, from bureaucrats to common foot soldiers, were usually corrupt, relatively illiterate, ill-disciplined, and primarily Mandarin-speaking, which contrasted with the Imperial Japanese government’s more efficient bureaucratic system that included literate and educated Taiwanese people. Usually, these officials would be able to communicate in Taiwanese Hokkien/Hakka and Japanese. The contrast had deepened the disappointment and discontent of the Taiwanese people. The backlash from mass looting, indiscriminate beatings, rapes, and more led to widespread social unrest, and many Taiwanese started to ask themselves if the Chinese were really their brethren or not.

• Ignition

On February 27, 1947, a Tobacco Monopoly Bureau enforcement team in Taipei went to the district of Taiheichō (太平町), Twatutia, where they confiscated contraband cigarettes, which like many other commodities were at that time became state-owned, thus illegal to sell directly. They seized cigarettes from a 40-year-old widow named Lin Jiang-mai (林江邁) at the Tianma Tea House (天馬茶屋). Lin was brutally knocked out, which attracted an angry crowd, and a shot from the enforcement team killed a civilian. Within 24 hours, the incident soon escalated to a full-blown protest in front of the Provisional Government office after. Soldiers tried to suppress the situation by shooting the protesters, which invoked further unrest across the island. Already discontent about the situation, different groups (including high school students, local autonomous groups, and even the fledgling Taiwanese Communist Party from other parts of Taiwan rose up, even taking control of the local government arsenal. Unfortunately, some violence against Chinese communities began to sprout in various locations. Due to the fear of increasing unrest and possible dissolution of social order, local autonomous groups, gentries, and representatives stood out after a few days. They formed 228 Incidents Settlement Committee (二二八處理委員會). They calmed the angry crowds, regulated local militia to secure order, and contacted the Provisional Government and its chairperson Chen Yi (陳儀), hoping to arrange negotiations and resolve the incidents and other governing problems, to which Chen agreed.

Or at least, that’s what Chen told them.

• Terror

The Committee didn’t know that Chen Yi had already regarded this as an official revolt that needed to be suppressed by military actions, which the ROC government approved in Nanjing and by Chiang Kai Shek himself. On March 6 1947, under Chen Yi’s request, the 21st division of the ROC army and the 4th MP Regiment had already sailed off to Taiwan, while Chen was still pretending he was willing to resolve the situation with the Committee peacefully, he even feigned approval towards several reform plans that the Committee suggested, all while the reinforcement was on their way to Taiwan. On the afternoon of March 7, Chen Yi, who was now sure that reinforcements were coming, did a 180 ° turn, firmly rejecting all their demands and uses them as evidence and accuses them of treason.

Meanwhile, the first mass-scale massacre broke out at Kaohsiung on March 5. Military police fortified Kaohsiung’s railroad station, cutting it off from food supply for almost a week. The local militia, led by Kaohsiung High School students, decided to repel the MPs from the railroad station but soon retreated due to the opposing side’s superior firepower. The Kaoshiung’s Committee soon contacted the commander of Kaohsiung Command, Peng Meng Qi (彭孟緝), and wishing for negotiation the next day. During the talks, Peng arrested all Committee members who attended, shot a few, and then started marching his troops to Kaohsiung City Hall, the militia and local Committee’s headquarters, where many civilians gathered awaiting the negotiation’s result. Peng ordered his troops to shoot anyone on sight. Around fifty to sixty civilians and local representatives died at City Hall; many more were mowed down by machine-gun fire or blown up by grenades when they tried to hide in buildings or underpasses.

But this was just the beginning of the slaughter.

On March 8, the ROC reinforcements from China had arrived at the port of Kaohsiung and Keelung. For the next ten days, the ROC army systematically suppressed each city and town. The army began shooting, arresting, and executing Committee members, militias, and civilians that stood in their way, the so-called “Cleansing”(清鄉). Approximately 20,000 Taiwanese lost their lives during this process. Many Taiwanese elites and social backbones were on the list of victims.

• Aftermath and impact

While officially the Cleansing and its concluding was over on May 16, the suppression of Taiwanese had lasted long after that. Following the defeat of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the ROC government entered its martial law era; the 228 massacre became taboo to whisper, with records and photos destroyed. Taiwanese identity also became a forbidden topic during the White Terror era. Many more Taiwanese would be arrested, tortured, and executed. Many of them escaped to foreign nations, usually the USA or Japan, and formed Taiwanese diaspora communities during the 60s. It was not until 1995, six years after the end of martial law, that the ROC government, led by Lee Teng-hui, officially issued an apology and started to investigate and offer compensation to the victims. And 228, like many other scars caused by the ROC government onto Taiwanese, is now the cornerstone of Taiwanese identity, something to remind us that what a Chinese government was, and it can be if it was run by those who put China’s interest in-front of everything else.