Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
disappointed and disillusioned with the mainlanders, the majority of
whom seemed uncouth and uneducated; most of them had not even
known about running water or electricity prior to their arrival. Worse
yet, most mainlanders harbored a sense of hostility, resentment,
and suspicion toward the Taiwanese because they had been under
Japanese rule for 50 years. Tensions eventually flared up between the
two groups, and even though the native Taiwanese vastly outnumbered
the mainlanders (85% to 15%), the mainlanders had political power and
the firepower of the armed forces to give them the advantage in any
intercommunal confrontation on the island.
THE FEBRUARY 28 INCIDENT
The mainland Chinese troops were not universally welcomed in
Taiwan, and tensions between native Taiwanese and mainlanders
began to increase, culminating with a reign of terror on the island that
began on February 28, 1947. On that day widespread protests against
the Kuomintang government's harshness and excesses broke out.
Unnerved by these protests, Chiang Kai-shek unleashed a massive,
violent crackdown. Before it was all over more than 20,000 Taiwanese,
including many nonviolent intellectuals, had been murdered. The
Kuomintang government then swept all record and discussion of this
violence under a rug of guarded secrecy, and it was not until the late
1980s that the people of Taiwan began to talk openly, instead of in
whispers, about the February 28 Incident. The incident and the long
period of terrified silence that followed it seriously diminished the
moral stature and legitimacy of the Nationalist government in the eyes
of Taiwan's native population. The mainland Chinese who arrived
in Taiwan after August 1945 were, at least initially, largely welcomed
as liberators and fellow countrymen, but after the February 28 Incident
they were reviled as oppressors even worse than the Japanese. “The
dogs have gone, the pigs have come” was howmany Taiwanese charac-
terized the transition from Japanese to Nationalist Chinese rule.
By early 1947 Taiwan was a powder keg waiting to explode. The
fateful spark came on February 27, when an elderly woman selling
contraband cigarettes on the streets of Taipei was roughed up by
Nationalist agents from the Tobacco and Alcohol Monopoly Bureau.
Whensheresistedandprotestedacrowdgathered,andinresponse
the agents panicked and fired their pistols wildly into the crowd, leav-
ing one person dead. When news of the incident spread throughout
the city the next morning there were protests and riots, and mainland
Chinese agents of the Monopoly Bureau were beaten to death.
