Dec 9 to Dec 15
As Formosa magazine (美麗島雜誌) celebrated its launch on Sept. 8, 1979 at the Mandarina Crown Hotel (中泰賓館), members and supporters of Ji Feng magazine (疾風雜誌) gathered outside.
The two publications were naturally at odds with each other — Formosa was the mouthpiece of the dangwai (黨外), or politicians who opposed the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) one-party rule, while Ji Feng was founded to counter the opposition, whom it called “Taiwanese independence mobsters (台灣獨立黑拳幫).”
Photo courtesy of Chen Po-wen
The official reason for Ji Feng’s gathering was to denounce the “traitor” Chen Wan-chen (陳婉真), who supported the dangwai from the US after being blacklisted from Taiwan for her political activities. Bringing a contingent of high school students, they yelled patriotic slogans and tried to block people from entering and leaving the hotel. Although there were skirmishes, the Mandarina Crown Hotel Incident did not descend into chaos — that would come three months later.
This event was just one of many conflicts that culminated in the Kaohsiung Incident, or Formosa Incident, on Dec. 10, 1979, when police and protesters clashed during a pro-democracy rally organized by Formosa magazine.
Much has been written about the incident and its ramifications, but everything began a year earlier, when the US announced that it would break relations with Taiwan for China.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
SIMMERING TENSIONS
Having made significant political gains in the local elections of 1977 — despite accusations that the KMT rigged votes — the dangwai was hoping to further its success during the supplementary elections for the national assembly and legislature.
Since opposition political parties were banned, these independent candidates formed a dangwai canvassing team in October 1978 to campaign as a group, which alarmed the government. Their collective platform included ending martial law, government censorship, the ban on new political parties and discrimination against local languages, and calling for the release of political prisoners.
Photo courtesy of National Central Library
The first incident broke out on Dec. 6 during a dangwai press conference, when then-legislator Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介) changed a phrase in the national anthem from “my party” to “my people,” causing pro-KMT politicians to rush the stage.
When the US announced that it was breaking relations with Taiwan for China on Dec. 16, just six days before the vote, the government suspended the elections. They issued several warnings that any pro-independence or anti-government activities would be severely punished. But on Dec. 25, the dangwai released a public statement criticizing the KMT’s authoritarian rule and reiterating its previous demands for democracy and freedom.
A month later, the government arrested dangwai leader Yu Teng-fa (余登發), tying him and his son to a sedition case and sentencing them to eight and two years in jail respectively. Led by then-Taoyuan County Commissioner Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良), the dangwai took to the streets for the first time to call for Yu’s release. The government then shut down two dangwai publications and moved to impeach Hsu for his actions.
Photo courtesy of National Central Library
The dangwai continued to organize gatherings throughout 1979, but in July, the government started suppressing them by force. On Aug. 4, the police shut down the underground newspaper Chao Liu (潮流) and arrested two of its staff in a widely-publicized incident after co-founder Chen, the dangwai supporter, protested by staging a hunger strike at Taiwan’s representative office in New York.
OPPOSING MAGAZINES
Ji Feng was founded on July 7, 1979. It slams the dangwai in its introductory statement.
“What makes us infinitely angry is that while Taiwan, Kinmen and Matsu have achieved peace and prosperity never seen in thousands of years of Chinese history… there’s a tiny countercurrent — the aspirant Taiwanese independence mobsters. They are driven by power and desire, and walk the same road as the communist bandits. They have willingly oppressed China on behalf of Westerners, using ‘democracy and human rights’ as a guise to incite violence and divide our territory and destroy our glorious achievements on this base to reclaim China… Our compatriots, it is time for the silent majority to attack these bandits! Let us unite and strike relentlessly and viciously against these demons!”
Formosa released its first edition on Aug. 16, 1979. Huang, the legislator, writes in the introduction: “Faced with national fervor toward the elections, the KMT panicked due to its political crisis [with the US]. It hurriedly stopped the elections and has been using all sorts of high-pressure tactics to destroy this tide of democracy, causing much worry and uncertainty in society over the past half-year… But democracy will not die. Long live the elections! We are encouraged by the people’s passion to participate in politics, and strongly believe that democracy is the tide of the times and cannot be stopped! This is why we have determinedly founded Formosa magazine to push forward the political movement of the new generation!”
In its third issue, the Ji Feng camp called their actions at the Mandarina Crown Hotel a “large-scale and far-reaching patriotic movement to save the country,” vowing that they would continue to take action until the “independence mobsters” were stopped.
Despite this vow, Ji Feng denied involvement when Formosa’s office and Huang’s home were ransacked by unknown attackers. Instead, they claimed that Formosa staff orchestrated the attacks themselves to gain sympathy and make the KMT look bad, in order to justify their “rebellious actions.”
In its sixth issue, Ji Feng celebrated the Kaohsiung Incident, stating: “The night of Dec. 10 is when god willed the utter destruction of these independence mobsters.”
Little would they know that today, the incident is now remembered as the turning point in Taiwan’s struggle for democracy.
Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that have anniversaries this week.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist