Anger over a brutal Monopoly Bureau raid the previous night boiled into citywide protest in Taipei. Nationalist government forces fired on demonstrators outside the governor's office, triggering the '228 Incident.' Chiang Kai-shek's regime responded with troops from the mainland who killed an estimated 18,000 to 28,000 Taiwanese in the following weeks, launching decades of martial law and the White Terror.
The spark came the evening before, when Monopoly Bureau agents in Taipei beat a widow selling untaxed cigarettes and, in the chaos that followed, shot and killed a bystander. Word spread overnight, and by the morning of February 28, 1947, furious crowds marched on the Taiwan Provincial Administration building demanding justice. Guards on the rooftop opened fire on the demonstrators, killing several and turning grievance into insurrection.
Within days, uprisings spread across the island as Taiwanese seized radio stations, formed settlement committees, and demanded political reform and greater autonomy from the mainland-dominated Kuomintang government. Governor Chen Yi initially negotiated but secretly requested reinforcements from Chiang Kai-shek, who dispatched troops that landed in early March.
What followed was a systematic massacre. Soldiers executed teachers, students, lawyers, and local elites—anyone suspected of leadership or dissent—in what became known as the White Terror's opening chapter. Estimates of the dead range from 18,000 to 28,000. The event was suppressed from public discussion for decades under martial law, only openly commemorated after Taiwan's democratization in the 1990s. February 28 is now a national holiday, Peace Memorial Day, and a monument in Taipei's 228 Peace Park bears the names of victims once too dangerous to speak aloud.
Key people: Chiang Kai-shek, Chen Yi