The 228 Massacre in 1947 was an immensely painful chapter in the modern history of Taiwan.
This year’s 70th anniversary was marked with numerous commemorative events among Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was right to announce that she would declassify all official materials on the incident and rehabilitate victims of human rights violations.
As part of the process of democratization, the nation seems to be ready to confront the truth and pursue historical justice for victims and their families. This is a long-awaited step in the right direction to have some closure on a turbulent past and move forward.
Meanwhile, China held a few public events to reframe the 228 Massacre from a nationalistic perspective. It reinterpreted the widespread Taiwanese protests against the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) suppression as an integral part of the popular struggle for liberation from the KMT regime. It went on to condemn Taiwanese academics and activists for appropriating the historical tragedy to legitimate the rise of democratic localism.
Motivated by the obsession with national unification, Beijing strives to reconcile the turbulent history of a frontier Taiwanese society with the perceived reality of an ambitious and assertive China in the early 21st century. It frequently employs the generalized discourses of nationalism, territorial integrity and political unification to discuss the “Taiwan question” and criticize the growth of democratic sentiments in Hong Kong.
Using such labels might make the Chinese Communist Party strong and fearless and appeal to the patriotic impulses of its own people. However, this propagandistic strategy creates an antagonistic mindset on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and perpetuates a misconception that offers no insight into the fast-changing political environment on the ground.
Because of a combination of international and internal factors, Taiwan and China today lack a commonly shared historical narrative.
The complexity of their bilateral relations calls for a first-hand, in-depth and critical analysis.
It is indeed difficult to reconcile the conflicting trajectories of modern Taiwanese and Chinese history and to impose a new unifying narrative on these two immensely complex societies. Equally impossible is to bridge the conceptual gap between a Han Chinese unifying discourse and the truth about what befell Taiwanese on Feb. 28, 1947.
As an academic discipline, historical inquiry encourages original research and ongoing debate about the past. Since different political, social, cultural and ethnic groups in Taiwan claim to be part of and to be affected by the 228 Incident, it is important to connect the nation’s authoritarian past and democratic present with a vision of strengthening the future wellbeing of citizens.
Taiwan’s democratization witnesses an incremental expansion of freedom for people of various class, gender, religious and linguistic origins, although with some resistance from the political “status quo” and with compromises and concessions along the way. After all, the battles for freedom and human rights have to be fought by each generation in different arenas.
Seen from this perspective, it is worth remembering the contingency of history. Rather than subscribing to a pre-deterministic vision of the past, one should acknowledge that previous events were uniquely grounded in specific circumstances and that changes in history often depended on what had happened previously.
A more sophisticated understanding of the 228 Massacre should not only move beyond a simplistic division of Taiwanese society into two mutually hostile forces, but also consider the vagaries of individual acts and the effects of exogenous and endogenous factors.
While some segments of the population collaborated with the KMT for self-enrichment, many civilians resisted the authoritarian system from the 1950s to 1980s and rejected the monochromatic view of the KMT’s benevolent rule that was once taken as an orthodox interpretation of Taiwanese history. Only by doing so will it be possible to acquire a sympathetic perspective on human experience that resonates with universal values and democratic accomplishments today.
Joseph Tse-hei Lee is professor of history at Pace University in New York.
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