February 28 Incident

The February 28 incident was an anti-government uprising in Taiwan in 1947 that was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang (KMT)–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, 1947, and the event is considered one of the most important in Taiwan's modern history, later serving as a critical impetus for the Taiwan independence movement.

Following Japan's surrender at the end of World War II, the Allies transferred administrative control of Taiwan to China in 1945, ending 50 years of Japanese colonial rule. Local residents grew resentful of the KMT administration's high-handed and often corrupt conduct, including arbitrary seizure of private property, economic mismanagement, and exclusion of Taiwanese from political participation. Economic conditions deteriorated sharply, with rice prices rising to 400 times their original value by January 1947.

The immediate flashpoint occurred on February 27, 1947, in Taipei, when agents of the State Monopoly Bureau confiscated contraband cigarettes from a Taiwanese widow, Lin Jiang-mai, and struck her with a gun. As a crowd gathered in protest, an agent fired into the crowd, fatally wounding a bystander. The next day, soldiers fired on demonstrators outside the Governor-General's Office, killing at least three people. Protesters seized a radio station and broadcast news of the incident across the island, triggering uprisings throughout Taiwan. Local settlement committees formed and presented the government with 32 demands for reform, including greater autonomy and an end to corruption. During the unrest, over 1,000 mainlanders were reportedly killed by Taiwanese civilians in initial spontaneous violence.

Governor Chen Yi stalled while awaiting military reinforcements from Fujian province. When ROC troops arrived on March 8, 1947, they launched a crackdown described by an American source cited in contemporaneous reporting as involving indiscriminate killing and arrest over several days. By the end of March, Chen Yi had ordered the imprisonment or execution of identified Taiwanese organizers; a Taiwanese delegation in Nanjing reported that his troops executed between roughly 3,000 and 4,000 people, though the precise toll remains undetermined due to missing KMT records. A government commission established in 1992 later estimated a broader death toll of 18,000 to 28,000, a figure that has since been challenged by various individuals, including former Premier Hau Pei-tsun.

The incident was followed two years later by 38 years of martial law, known as the White Terror, during which the incident was considered too taboo to discuss publicly. President Lee Teng-hui became the first president to publicly discuss the incident, on its anniversary in 1995, and formally apologized on behalf of the government. February 28 is now an official public holiday, Peace Memorial Day, and memorials including the National 228 Memorial Museum have been established. In 2019, Taiwan's Transitional Justice Commission exonerated those convicted in the aftermath. Chen Yi himself was later executed in 1950 after being convicted of espionage following an attempted defection to the Chinese Communist Party.