Why did ROC get such bad rep?

Actually, there was no free press under Chiang. He found that to be annoyingly counterproductive to maintaining his dictatorship over China. Whoever acted like a free press,l he'd get his fascist organization the Blue Shirts to assasinate them. He even outlawed reporting of the KMT-c aused 2-28 Massacre, under penalty of death. Martial law existed in Taiwan from 1949 until 1989, and essentially whatever reversals made were b/c of the courageous waishengren and benshengren who fought the system.

Frank Dikötter says it better than I could:

(emphasis mine)

The Age of Openness: China Before Mao said:
It goes without saying that politically offensive publications could be closed down and journalists were arrested and executed, although the degree of government interference varied hugely during the republican era. Under the early republic, for instance, many new publications flourished thanks to the decentralisation of power, while publishers in Xi’an were free to criticise Chiang Kai-shek even at the height of censorship under a unified Nationalist party in 1936, thanks to the patronage of two powerful governors. Stephen MacKinnon is right to point out that freedom of expression during the republican era was limited, but one wonders in which countries between the two world wars the press was entirely free from political influence.^52 In contrast to countries such as Germany and Russia, a large number of publications in China in the 1930s were relatively open thanks to a politically diverse situation in which editors and writers could always find either foreign protection or political patronage, from foreign concessions in Shanghai to cities controlled by regional governors critical of the central government. The Dagongbao, China’s most important newspaper before 1949, published commentaries which often lambasted Chiang Kai-shek, and advocated press freedom and political opposition.^53 Edgar Snow could not only visit Mao Zedong in Yan’an, but his propaganda piece in favour of the Communist Party was translated and distributed in most parts of the country. Even with censorship, often erratic and inconsistent, the opportunities for political expression outside of the ruling party before 1949 by far exceeded anything even remotely possible under emperor or Mao.

The relative freedom enjoyed by the press, as well as the even greater freedom of religious belief and personal movement (no hukou system back then) come from the fact that the KMT was not a totalitarian-minded system, even if it was authoritarian. It was demonstratively open to reforms and improvements, and did not see Tiananmen-style repressions as the norm. Yes, the 228 massacre was horrible, but how often did it happen, and under what desperate circumstance?

Were it not for the relatively open and corrective nature of the KMT, the Taiwanese dissidents who campaigned for democracy would long be either vaporized, in labor camps, or transformed after long sessions of "thought work." Suffice to say Taiwan would not be a democracy either and the benshengren would have had their identity erased completely.

EDIT: I'm not trying to say that Chiang Kai-shek was some enlightened dictator or that he was correct to be corrupt. It's more that in criticizing him and his government one has to look at the context, and in his particular context he wasn't worse than the other viable players of his time. Otherwise the discussion just devolves into emotional reactions to isolated details, and loses rationality.
 
Last edited:
Hi, Lex. Thank you for sharing this. It's good to analyze and evaluate all historical sources available. However, I think two powerful regional [warlords] allowing to criticize their enemy Chiang means that they hated Chiang and they enabled the people, not Chiang being an enlightened head of state/government . Also, you are right that more liberal-minded foreign governments intervened to pressure Chiang into allowing for free speech while in China as well as in Taiwan. This isn't the same as him believing in democracy on principle.

The progressive-minded Guangxi warlord and later vice-president Li Tsung-Ren was opposed to Chiang's arbitrarily arresting those who had only spoken up against him, and pushed for new laws prohibiting this form happening. he didn't succeed. Chianf was known to get his blue-shirts to both attack other parties like the Chinese Social Nationalist Party (not Nazis) and their affiliated newspaper's leaders for publishing scathihng reports on him.

Sun Yat Sen was actually in favor of press freedoms, and Chiang betrayed his boss's ideals once again.

I think some of the KMT loosening up their censorship on Taiwan had to do with the fact that the pro-demcracy benshengren and waishengren outnumbered the anti-democracy ones signficantly, and if the regime would survive, it had to adapt.

I'll search for an article on the 2-28 incident . I don't want to seem biased by being the only one (whose position is fervently anti-Chiang) to give the only perspective on it.

I also want to emphasize that not only did Chiang's far-right KMT followers commit these kind of crimes, they also did other death-penalty-deserving garbage like a KMT bigwig forcing my half-great-aunt to marry him, or they threatened to murder her entire immediate family. They also would do other unethical, death-deserving things like grabbing an attractive woman off the road, raping her, then killing her and dumping her body on the roadside!!!! When the woman's parents reported the crime at the police station, the crooked authorities just gave them a small rice bag to compensate!!!!
 
Last edited:
TAKEN FROM WIKIPEDIA:

The 228 Incident (Chinese: 二二八事件, literally Two Two Eight Incident) or 228 Massacre was an anti-government uprising in Taiwan. Taking its name from the date of the incident, it began on February 27, 1947, and was violently suppressed by the KMT-led Republic of China government, which killed thousands of civilians beginning on February 28. Estimates of the number of deaths vary from 10,000 to 30,000 or more.[1][2] The massacre marked the beginning of the Kuomintang's White Terror period in Taiwan, in which thousands more inhabitants vanished, died, or were imprisoned. This incident is one of the most important events in Taiwan's modern history, and is a critical impetus for the Taiwanese independence movement.
In 1945, 50 years of Japanese rule of Taiwan ended when Japan lost World War II. In October, the United States, on behalf of the Allied Forces, handed temporary administrative control of Taiwan to the Kuomintang-administered Republic of China (ROC) under General Order No. 1 to handle the surrender of Japanese troops and ruling administration. Local inhabitants became resentful of what they saw as high-handed and frequently corrupt conduct on the part of the KMT authorities, their arbitrary seizure of private property, and their economic mismanagement. The flashpoint came on February 27 in Taipei, when a dispute between a cigarette vendor and an officer of the Office of Monopoly triggered civil disorder and an open rebellion that lasted for days.[3] The uprising was violently put down by the military of the Republic of China and the island was placed under martial law.
The subject was officially taboo for decades. On the anniversary of the event in 1995, President Lee Teng-hui addressed the subject publicly, a first for a Taiwanese head of state. The event is now openly discussed and February 28 is commemorated by Peace Memorial Day (traditional Chinese: 和平紀念日; simplified Chinese: 和平纪念日; pinyin: hépíng jìniànrì ), and details of the event have become the subject of government and historian investigation. Every February 28, the president of the ROC gathers with other officials to ring a commemorative bell in memory of the victims. The president bows to family members of 2/28 victims and gives each one a certificate officially exonerating any victims previously blacklisted as enemies of the state. Monuments and memorial parks to the victims of 2/28 have been erected in a number of Taiwanese cities, including Kaohsiung and Taipei.[4][5] Taipei's former "Taipei New Park" was rededicated as 228 Peace Memorial Park and houses the National 228 Memorial Museum to commemorate the tragic incident, which opened on February 28, 1997, and re-opened on February 28, 2011, with new permanent exhibits.[6][7]

The Kuomintang (KMT) troops from Mainland China were initially welcomed by local inhabitants, but their behavior and the KMT administration led to Taiwanese discontent during the immediate postwar period. As Governor-General, Chen Yi took over and sustained the Japanese system of state monopolies in tobacco, sugar, camphor, tea, paper, chemicals, petroleum refining, mining and cement. He confiscated some 500 Japanese-owned factories and mines, and homes of former Japanese residents. Economic mismanagement led to a large black market, runaway inflation and food shortages. Many commodities were compulsorily bought cheaply by the KMT administration and shipped to Mainland China to meet the Civil War shortages where they were sold at very high profit furthering the general shortage of goods in Taiwan. The price of rice rose to 100 times its original value between the time the Chinese took over to the spring of 1946. It inflated further to 400 times the original price by January 1947.[9] Carpetbaggers from Mainland China dominated nearly all industry, political and judicial offices, displacing the Taiwanese who were formerly employed; and many of the ROC garrison troops were highly undisciplined, looting, stealing and contributing to the overall breakdown of infrastructure and public services.[10]
Many Taiwanese view the Japanese rule favorably, both then and now. Many Taiwanese had served in the colonial administration and Imperial Japanese Army. Because the Taiwanese elites had met with some success with self-government under Japanese rule, they had expected the same system from the incoming ruling Chinese government. However, the Chinese Nationalists opted for a different route, aiming for the centralization of government powers and a reduction in local authority.
 
Nearly all US backed Asian anti-communist regimes tend to have a stigma against them. The only one doesn't seem to have was the ROK. Possibly because they seemed to be the only great ones at running a directorship and creating prosperous country at the same time.
 
Nearly all US backed Asian anti-communist regimes tend to have a stigma against them. The only one doesn't seem to have was the ROK. Possibly because they seemed to be the only great ones at running a directorship and creating prosperous country at the same time.

That's a very good point. Yeah, perhaps so. I've heard that Park Chung Hee's regime had major dissenters who still admired the economic achievements he made while in power.
 
Top