The February 28 incident (also called the February 28 massacre, the 228 incident, or the 228 massacre) was an anti-government uprising in Taiwan in 1947 that was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang–led Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC). Directed by provincial governor Chen Yi and president Chiang Kai-shek, thousands of civilians were killed beginning on February 28. While the event is primarily characterized by the military crackdown, the initial stages involved widespread civil unrest and violence directed against innocent Mainland civilians. Historical research also indicates that various groups, including members of the Communist Party, participated in the uprising. The incident is considered one of the most important events in Taiwan's modern history and was a critical impetus for the Taiwan independence movement.
In 1945, following the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II, the Allies handed administrative control of Taiwan over to China, thus ending 50 years of Japanese colonial rule. Local residents became resentful of what they saw as high-handed and frequently corrupt conduct on the part of the Kuomintang (KMT) authorities, including the arbitrary seizure of private property, economic mismanagement, and exclusion from political participation. The flashpoint came on February 27, 1947, in Taipei, when agents of the State Monopoly Bureau struck a Taiwanese widow suspected of selling contraband cigarettes. An officer then fired into a crowd of angry bystanders, hitting one man, who died the next day. Soldiers fired upon demonstrators the next day, after which a radio station was seized by protesters and news of the revolt was broadcast to the entire island. As the uprising spread, the KMT-installed governor Chen Yi called for military reinforcements, and the uprising was violently put down by the National Revolutionary Army. Two years later, and for 38 years thereafter, the island would be placed under martial law in a period known as the "White Terror".
During the White Terror, the KMT persecuted perceived political dissidents, and the incident was considered too taboo to be discussed. President Lee Teng-hui became the first president to discuss the incident publicly on its anniversary in 1995. The event is now openly discussed, and its details have become the subject of government and academic investigation. February 28 is now an official public holiday called Peace Memorial Day, on which the president of Taiwan gathers with other officials to ring a commemorative bell in memory of the victims. Monuments and memorial parks to the victims of the February 28 incident have been erected in a number of Taiwanese cities. In particular, Taipei's former Taipei New Park was renamed 228 Peace Memorial Park, and the National 228 Memorial Museum was opened on February 28, 1997. The Kaohsiung Museum of History also has a permanent exhibit detailing the events of the incident in Kaohsiung. In 2019, the Transitional Justice Commission exonerated protesters who were convicted by the government in the aftermath.
The number of deaths from the incident and massacre was estimated to be between 18,000 and 28,000. Other estimates are much lower. While the majority of the casualties were Taiwanese at the hands of the military, historical records also document hundreds of Mainland civilians (Waishengren) were killed or injured by angry mobs. A government commission was set up under the administration of the pro-Taiwan independence president, Lee Teng-hui, to determine the facts. Using the civil registry set up during the Japanese administration, which was acknowledged by all as very efficient, they determined who was living at the time of the handover to the Chinese administration. The commission was given the power to award to the family of anyone who died in the period of the insurrection and the restoration of Nationalist government rule an amount of NT$6,000,000, about US$150,000. The families did not have to prove that the death was related to the above events. A total of 800 people came forward to get the awards for the people who died during the period.
Background
During the 50 years of Japanese rule in Taiwan (1895–1945), Taiwan experienced economic development and an increased standard of living, serving as a supply base for the Japanese main islands. After World War II, Taiwan was placed under the administrative control of the Republic of China to provide stability until a permanent arrangement could be made. Chen Yi, the governor-general of Taiwan, arrived on October 24, 1945, and received the last Japanese governor, Ando Rikichi, who signed the receipt of Order No. 1 on the next day. Chen Yi then proclaimed the day as Retrocession Day to make Taiwan part of the Republic of China. The ROC government later issued a decree on the resumption of Chinese nationality for people on Taiwan, stating, "The people of Taiwan are people of our country. They lost their nationality because the island was invaded by an enemy. Now that the land has been recovered, the people who originally had the nationality of our country shall, effective on 25 December 1945, resume the nationality of our country." However, the governments of two of the allied powers, the United Kingdom and the United States, made it clear that they did not agree with Chinese government's unilateral proclamation about changing the territorial sovereignty over Taiwan and Taiwanese nationality before concluding a peace treaty with Japan.
Taiwanese perceptions of Japanese rule were more positive than perceptions in other parts of East and Southeast Asia that came under Japanese imperialism. Despite this, the Kuomintang troops from Mainland China were initially welcomed by the Taiwanese. Their harsh conduct and the corrupt KMT administration quickly led to Taiwanese discontent during the immediate postwar period. As governor-general, Chen Yi took over and sustained the Japanese system of state monopolies in tobacco, sugar, camphor, tea, paper, chemicals, petroleum refining, mining, and cement, the same way the Nationalists treated people in other former Japanese-controlled areas (earning Chen Yi the nickname "robber" (劫收)). He confiscated some 500 Japanese-owned factories and mines, as well as the homes of former Japanese residents.
Economic mismanagement led to a large black market, runaway inflation, and food shortages. Many commodities were compulsorily bought cheaply by the KMT administration and shipped to mainland China to meet the Civil War shortages, where they were sold at a very high profit, furthering the general shortage of goods in Taiwan. The price of rice rose to 100 times its original value between the time the Nationalists took over and the spring of 1946, increasing to nearly four times the price in Shanghai. It inflated further to 400 times the original price by January 1947. Carpetbaggers from mainland China dominated nearly all industry, as well as political and judicial offices, displacing the Taiwanese who were formerly employed. Many of the ROC garrison troops were highly undisciplined, looting, stealing, and contributing to the overall breakdown of infrastructure and public services. Because the Taiwanese elites had met with some success with self-government under Japanese rule, they had expected the same system from the incoming ruling Chinese Nationalist Government. However, the Chinese Nationalists opted for a different route, aiming for the centralization of government powers and a reduction in local authority. The KMT's nation-building efforts followed this ideology because of unpleasant experiences with the diverging forces during the Warlord Era in 1916–1928 that had torn the government in China. Mainland Communists were even preparing to bring down the government like the Ili Rebellion. The different goals of the Nationalists and the Taiwanese, coupled with cultural and language misunderstandings, served to further inflame tensions on both sides.
Uprising and crackdown
On the evening of February 27, 1947, a Tobacco Monopoly Bureau enforcement team in Taipei went to the district of Taiheichō (太平町), Twatutia (Dadaocheng in Mandarin), where they confiscated contraband cigarettes from a 40-year-old widow named Lin Jiang-mai (林江邁) at the Tianma Tea House. When she demanded their return, one of the men struck her in the head with the butt of his gun, prompting the surrounding Taiwanese crowd to challenge the Tobacco Monopoly agents. As they fled, one agent shot his gun into the crowd, hitting a bystander who died the next day. The crowd, which had already been harbouring feelings of frustration from unemployment, inflation, and corruption towards the Nationalist government, reached its breaking point. The crowd protested to both the police and the gendarmes but was mostly ignored.
Protesters gathered the next morning around Taipei, calling for the arrest and trial of the agents involved in the previous day's shooting, and eventually made their way to the Governor General's Office, where security forces tried to disperse the crowd. Soldiers opened fire into the crowd, killing at least three people. On March 4, the Taiwanese took over the administration of the town and military bases and forced their way into a local radio station to broadcast news of the incident and call for people to revolt, causing uprisings to erupt throughout the island. By evening, martial law had been declared, and curfews were enforced by the arrest or shooting of anyone who violated the curfew.
For several weeks after the February 28 incident, Taiwanese civilians controlled much of Taiwan. The initial riots were spontaneous and sometimes violent, with mainland Chinese receiving beatings from and being killed by Taiwanese. Over 1,000 mainlanders were killed. Within a few days, the Taiwanese were generally coordinated and organized, and public order in Taiwanese-held areas was upheld by volunteer civilians organised by students and unemployed former Japanese army soldiers. Local leaders formed settlement committees (or resolution committees), which presented the government with a list of 32 demands for reform of the provincial administration. They demanded, among other things, greater autonomy, free elections, the surrender of the ROC Army to the Settlement Committee, and an end to government corruption. Motivations among the various Taiwanese groups varied; some demanded greater autonomy within the ROC, while others wanted UN trusteeship or full independence. The Taiwanese also demanded representation in the forthcoming peace treaty negotiations with Japan, hoping to secure a plebiscite to determine the island's political future.
Outside of Taipei, there were examples of the formation of local militias, such as the Communist-inspired 27 Brigade near Taichung. In Chiayi, the mayor's residence was set on fire, and local militias fought with the military police.
The Nationalist Government, under governor Chen Yi, stalled for time while it waited for reinforcements from Fujian. Upon their arrival on March 8, the ROC troops launched a crackdown. The New York Times reported, "An American who had just arrived in China from Taipei said that troops from the mainland China arrived there on March 7 and indulged in three days of indiscriminate killing and arrest. For a time, everyone seen on the streets was fired upon, homes were broken into, and occupants were arrested. In the lower income sections the streets were said to have been littered with dead.
By the end of March, Chen Yi had ordered the imprisonment or execution of the leading Taiwanese organizers he could identify. His troops reportedly executed, according to a Taiwanese delegation in Nanjing, maybe between 3,000 to 4,000 people throughout the island, though the exact number is still undetermined. Detailed records kept by the KMT have been reported as missing. Some of the killings were random, while others were systematic. Taiwanese political leaders were among those targeted, and many of the Taiwanese who had formed self-governing groups during the reign of the Japanese were also victims of the February 28 incident. A disproportionate number of the victims had been discharged from the Imperial Japanese Army and came back unemployed. They were involved in the riots and looting and beat up recent immigrants from China. They presented the most fear, as they looked no different from Japanese soldiers from the mainland.
Some political organisations that participated in the uprising, for example the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League, were declared "communist". Many of their members were arrested and executed.
By late March 1947, the central executive committee of the KMT had recommended that Chen Yi be dismissed as governor-general over the "merciless brutality" he had shown in suppressing the rebellion. In June 1948, he was appointed provincial chairman of Zhejiang province. In January 1949, he attempted to defect to the Chinese Communist Party, but Chiang Kai-shek immediately relieved Chen of his duties. Chen Yi was escorted to Taiwan and later imprisoned in Keelung. In May 1950, a Taiwan military court sentenced Chen Yi to death for espionage. On June 18, he was executed at Machangding, Taipei.
Death toll
No accurate death toll exists, but the most frequently cited figures range between 8,000–28,000.
In the immediate aftermath of the events, in addition to the Nanjing-based delegation, which cited 3,000–4,000, George Kerr cited a figure of 10,000 as being provided by various externally-based groups, a figure he cited in Formosa Betrayed, the first major book covering the incident in English which played a significant role in bringing it to light.
A commonly cited range of 18,000–28,000 is based on an estimate made by a commission established in 1992 by then Premier Hau Pei-tsun, whose final report was adopted in 2007 by Premier Su Tseng-chang as the official account of the incident.
The 18,000–28,000 range has been challenged by several individuals, most prominently by Hau Pei-tsun, who in a letter published in the Chinese-language United Daily News in February 2012, questioned whether "over 10,000 were killed" in the 228 Incident. Hau based his critique on the number of victims and their descendants who were claiming compensation for damages. Only around 1,000 people had put in claims for compensation as victims of the incident. However, others have contended that the veil of secrecy under the martial law period and taboo of discussing the matter had contributed to this low number, particularly as many descendants of victims may have been unaware that their relatives had perished.
Another critique of the common figure came from Marvin C. H. Ho, the president of the Taipei Language Institute and a member of the commission that issued the report. Mr. Ho stated that among his colleagues writing the report, very few supported the higher figure of 28,000. However, at the same time, he critiqued the report for only limiting itself to events in 1947. Fellow commission member Lai Tse-han, a history professor who was in charge of drafting the report, suggested that the report was shifting some blame away from the Chiang family by not covering extensive violations of human rights during the period where they had undeniable knowledge and complicity in the events, namely the 1950s and 1960s. Professor Lai stated that "A lot of people here don't know about the repression in the 50's and 60's... More people were killed at that time than during 2-28. Police just knocked on the door at midnight, and then the people inside just disappeared." This viewpoint is somewhat similar to that of Kerr, who cited a figure of 10,000, but stated that between 1947 and 1965, when Formosa Betrayed was published, that " If we add to this the thousands who have been seized and done away with since March, 1947, on the pretext that they were involved in the affair, the number may reach the 20,000 figure often given by Formosan writers."