Home > Publications > Bulletin
The February 28 Incident in 1947 had a tremendous impact on many places in Taiwan. Jinshan is located on the northern coast of Taiwan and is close to the original place of the incident—Taipei. Therefore, people in Jinshan got involved in the incident immediately. The most important factor of the incident in Jinshan was the conflict between the army stationed in Jinshan and the local people. Jinshan saw the rule of the martial law, the shooting of civilians by soldiers, and a policy of pacifying and cleaning the countryside that caused the deaths of about a dozen people and the suffering of their relatives and thus led to local people’s fear and grief. Yet due to many factors, the fact of the incident was long taboo in Taiwan. The February 28 Incident in Jinshan had never been mentioned in the local gazettes. Furthermore, even in the official report of this incident in 1992, it was only briefly described and some crucial issues were not clarified.
In order to explore this incident, the authors collected various materials including the government archives, population data, personal statements, oral history, photos, and maps. Matching the pieces of evidence from different places involved in the incident, the authors describe the incident and its aftermath in Jinshan, list the names of victims, and discuss the reevaluation and compensation of the victims in recent years.
This study is an example of using newly-released archives to explore the February 28 incident. If similar case studies can be done in the future, we can surely arrive at a better understanding of this incident as a whole. Now the facts of the February 28 incident in Jinshan have more or less been revealed. The task we next face is not only to understand the facts more thoroughly but also to evaluate them in an impartial manner, a task made difficult because the “2-2-8” incident was not just personal experiences or a historical event but also a “symbol” or “myth” that has been imagined, created, and manipulated by different people. After compensating the relatives of the victims, we should think about how to avoid shifting our view from the standpoint of the government to the standpoint of the victims in a Manichean manner, and to understand “2-2-8” through a fair evaluation based on solid historical records.
This paper reveals that Taiwan was built in the period 1895-1945 by the Japanese empire as an entrepot in East Asia to compete with Hong Kong and Xiamen, the two most important ports through which Taiwan engaged in international economic relations prior to Japanese rule. The entrepot role of Hong Kong in linking East Asia and Europe-America through the Suez Canal by steamship was still stressed by the Japanese empire. Yet Taiwan was also built as another entrepot in East Asia by the Japanese empire, not only because of its geographical centrality between Japan and southern China or southeast Asia, but also because of its cultural commonality with the Chinese of these areas. Through the tariff system, the exchange system, the steamship system (especially the Pacific steamship lines in contrast with the Atlantic lines), and Japan’s cheap and good-quality products, Taiwan became increasingly separated from China and Hong Kong and more attached with Japan proper and its other colonies, particularly in the 1930s when Pacific relations had been shrunk by the World Depression.
Japanese merchants and Taiwanese merchants arose to compete with the Western merchants and the overseas Chinese merchants for the remaining trade between Taiwan and Hong Kong. The Japanese merchants became dominant in such direct trade, while the Taiwanese merchants were dominant in the triangle financial transaction among Taiwan-Hong Kong-Southern China.
The declining economic relations between Hong Kong and Taiwan in the period of 1895-1940 are also seen in the economic relations between Japan and Hong Kong. In the 1930s, Japanese ports such as Kobe and Osaka beat Hong Kong’s status as the most important port in East Asia in the 1910s. Ports under Japanese influence such as Dalian surpassed Chinese ports such as Niuzhuang. The rise of ports under Japanese influence was actually caused by the rising Pacific steamship lines, particularly after the Russo-Japanese War when Japan started to vigorously expand its Pacific lines. Though several Pacific lines had been developed since the United States extended its territory to California, the Atlantic Steamship lines through Hong Kong were the main avenue to connect East Asia with the United States or Europe. The completion of the Panama Canal in 1914 and that of the Suez Canal in 1869, marked the time sequence for the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean to connect the East and the West by steamship.
Before the rise of the Pacific era, even as Japan gradually rose up in East Asia, trade relations among China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan were reinforced, and all centered at Hong Kong for exchange within East Asia or between the East and the West. Yet with the rise of the Pacific Ocean lines and ports under Japanese influence, the existent integration of East Asian order centered on China witnesses eruption. At the same time, main export market for Taiwan’s camphor changed from Germany to the United States, and Taiwan’s Oolong tea added the west coast of the United States to its original east coast market. Even the east coast trade route partly shifted from the Suez Canal to the Panama Canal to buy Taiwan’s teas. The separation of Taiwan from Hong Kong and China for its external economic relations in the period of 1895-1945 is a segment of the entire structural change in the relation between East and West due to the rise of Pacific Ocean steamship navigation.
The government and the public of China were psychologically prepared for the breakout of the Sino-Japanese war. The problem was when the war would begin and how China would meet the Japanese attack. In addition to the promotion of public health, leaders in the medical world such as Jui-heng Liu, K’o-sheng Lim, and others also considered how to integrate the maximum medical resources to satisfy the demands of war. In The Great Wall battle had not only provided them with an unplanned experiment, but also revealed the importance of the China Red Cross for the first aid in the field. Bypassing the National Health Department and the Military Medical Department, Jui-heng Liu also hoped that first aid would become the top priority of the Red Cross and that the Red Cross would combine with the National Health Department and the Military Medical Department so as to make the maximum effect at wartime. This is the original notion behind the war’s so-called three-in-one policy.
In terms of concrete action, personnel arrangements were needed to put the above stated policy into force. First, Ching-chou Pang was sent to work at the General Ambulance Corps and the National Health Department, so that he would be responsible for carrying out first aid at the outset of the war. Nanking Wounded Soldiers Hospital was jointly established by Liu and Pang. However, after the withdrawal from Nanking, the first aid policy of Pang was considered out-of-date; as a result, reorganization of the Red Cross and first aid staff that withdrew to Hankou became necessary, and K’o-sheng Lim was appointed to do this job.
K’o-sheng Lim proposed that mobile ambulance corps form the war’s basic first-aid unit was later accepted by even the military and the National Health Department. Based upon this new first aid policy, Lim set up the Medical Relief Crops. In reality, Medical Relief Crops was compromise between the National Government and the Red Cross. Formally, the Medical Relief Crops was subordinate to the Red Cross, but in fact it gradually became the center for whole first aid system during the war. As it combined its resources with the National Health Department and the Military Medical Department in regard to personnel, organization, business and training, it actually acted as a leader. However, the Medical Relief Crops was still a private group that faced many difficulties. To solve these difficulties and achieve the three-in-one policy, K’o-sheng Lim suggested that the government transfer the Medical Relief Crops into the military system. This issue caused a great dispute in the Red Cross. Lim was forced to resign office due to his support for the Chinese Communists.
However, the National Government gradually put the Red Cross into the military system, which eulminated in the three-in-one policy during the war. This article shows how Jui-heng Liu and K’o-sheng Lim built the entire first aid system step by step by combining the resources of the Red Cross through the three-in-one policy. The Medical Relief Crops formed the core of the first aid system. With the execution of personnel, training and practical first aid, all available medical resources were fully and effectively utilized. In the light of modern first aid in the field of public health, this was an unprecedented achievement.
Who wrote the lyrics of the school song of the National Southwest Associated University? In an article and again in his autobiography, Profeeor Fung Youlan testified that he himself was the author of this lyric. But Fung’s testimony was first rejected by Zhang Qingchang, the composer of the school song, then denied by Huang Yanfu and Zhang Yuanqian, specialists in the history of the National Southwest Associated University. By carefully examining the archival evidence and Fung’s biographical materials, this paper affirms Fung’s testimony that the author of the lyric was indeed Fung Youlan.
Ever since its retreat to Taiwan, the ultimate goal of the National Government of the Republic of China (NGRC) was to “Return to the Mainland” or to “Reconquer the Mainland.” The United States, the main sponsor of the NGRC in the 1950s, never intended to help the aging Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in fulfilling his “dream.” Washington, however, maintained public ambiguity over such slogans in the hope they would help to contain the “Red Chinese”. Such a deliberate ambiguity was challenged when the Communists launched the first shelling campaign against Quemoy in September 1954. Through this and then the next Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958, Washington was forced to think hard about the “Reconquering the Mainland” slogan. It first decided to advice Taipei to prepare itself as “a force of opportunity” ready to take over the mainland when circumstances became favorable, rather than planning on retaking the mainland by force. Then, in 1958, Washington depicted a new role for the Nationalists—to be the “custodian of Chinese culture and values,” so that it could appeal to the Chinese people when the Communist regime was on the verge of collapse. Since Chiang Kai-shek had been stressing that the task of reconquering the mainland relied mainly on political, rather than military, means, he agreed to reiterate it in a joint communique with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. In that pronouncement, it was said that the principle means of successfully liberating the Chinese people “is the implementation of Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles and not the use of force.” Judging from the enormous efforts by the NGRC in promoting the “Restoration of Chinese Culture” since the mid-1960s and the “Reunification through the Practice of the Three People’s Principles” since the 1970s, Washington’s design perhaps had a lasting impact over the essence of the NGRC’s policy to “Reconquer the Mainland.”