FEB. 26 to MARCH 4
Best known for petitioning then-Taiwan governor Chen Yi (陳儀) after the 228 Incident with 32 demands, Ong Thiam-teng (王添灯) paid the ultimate price when he was arrested in his sleep on March 11, 1947. He was never seen again.
Despite making the demands (the number later climbed to 42) as chairman of the 228 Settlement Committee, only the first seven were in response to the anti-government uprising on Feb. 28, 1947 and the subsequent brutal crackdown.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The rest were directed at misrule by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who officially took over Taiwan in October 1945 after Japanese surrender. Items Ong asked for include the enactment of a provincial autonomy law, direct elections for county and city officials, and for two-thirds of the commissioners to have lived in Taiwan for at least 10 years, indicating strong public discontent toward the new government that ultimately led to the uprising.
THIRTY-TWO DEMANDS
Ong was not shy about his distaste for Japanese rule, and lost his government job in 1929 due to his stance. He was imprisoned at least once, and welcomed the KMT when they arrived, joining the Three Principles Youth Group (三民主義青年團) in September 1945. But after he became a member of the Taiwan Representative Council, he began openly criticizing KMT officials of corruption, earning him the moniker “The Iron Councillor” (鐵面議員).
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
As the publisher of the People’s Herald (人民導報), Ong ran a scathing piece in June 1946 about Kaohsiung police extorting farmers. The story was titled “The trauma of Japanese rule reappears in Kaohsiung” and the subhead read “The police are the lackeys of the landowners, just like during Japanese rule.”
The police station sued Ong, but he was acquitted with the help of lawyer Lin Kuei-tuan (林桂端). Lin would be arrested a few days before Ong, also never to be seen again.
In August 1946, Ong wrote a piece for Xinxin Magazine (新新雜誌) that further criticized the KMT.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
“We Taiwanese were extremely happy when the pillar of imperialism crumbled. We announced in unison that Taiwan had returned to the motherland with an excitement as if we could reach heaven in one step,” he writes. “But what about now? Did we get the new pillar we wanted? No! No! We are now like a ship without oars, floating in the open sea.”
Ong cited massive inflation of goods, transportation, electricity, water and taxes, adding that word on the street was that Taiwan had taken a step back 50 years. He called for the people to be proactive and take ownership of their country while helping the government become the new pillar for Taiwan.
“The honest people of Taiwan don’t even dare to wish for rule under the Three Principles,” Ong wrote. “But at the very least there should be rule by law.”
His 32 demands are even more telling of the injustices against Taiwanese. Much of it has to do with equal opportunity in the government — such as popular elections, appointing Taiwan-born citizens as police chiefs, heads of public enterprises as well as judges and prosecutors.
He sought to end all political arrests and to stop the military from arresting civilians, and called for freedom to assemble, speak, publish and strike.
The next day, the committee tacked on 10 more requests — including labor laws, fair treatment of Aborigines, the abolishment of the Taiwan Garrison Command and for the government to pay Taiwan for the large amount of food supplies shipped to China to support the civil war.
His demands were ignored, of course.
Ong’s voice was heard for the last time on March 7 through a radio broadcast: “No matter where we came from, China or Taiwan, we have the same purpose: to fight against greedy politicians… From now on, this event will not be solved by the committee, but by all our people … To force the government to accept our reasonable demands, all of us should keep fighting together.”
ALL ABOUT RICE?
One often-cited underlying factor of the 228 Incident was the extreme inflation of rice after the war, rising from NT$42 per dou (斗, approximately 7kg) in November 1945 to NT$285 per dou in May 1946.
Some blame it on the KMT exporting large amounts of Taiwanese rice to fund the Chinese Civil War, while others believe that it was a fallout of the Japanese colonial government giving large amounts of rice to the Japanese Army and Japanese residents of Taiwan.
Su Yao-chung (蘇瑤崇) writes in the Academia Sinica study, A New Exploration of the Post-War Rice Shortage in Taiwan (戰後台灣米荒問題新探), “Surging rice prices and an out of control food shortage led to the starvation of the underprivileged people and those in remote areas. Resentment among Taiwanese ballooned, finally igniting the 228 Incident.”
Su writes that the shortage can be traced back to a period when the Japanese were converting rice farms into bases for military use during World War II. US airstrikes also damaged fertilizer factories, and the crops were also damaged by typhoons and other natural disasters.
Su dismisses the “sending rice to China” theory, instead claiming that Chen Yi’s government mishandled the situation and also hoarded large amounts of rice for “military supplies.”
“The new government saw Taiwanese as their new subjects, and saw the plundering of resources as their first priority,” Su writes. “They came with the mindset that Taiwan’s rice should be used to fund the war in China, but when they found that there was not enough rice, they immediately shifted to hoarding and self-preservation.”
Su adds that this was just the tip of the iceberg to what was really happening.
“The same situation happened in many other areas regarding the reconstruction of Taiwan. The people ended up despising the government, and the 228 Incident of 1947 is merely the most prominent of its failures,” he writes.
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.
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