Taiwan commemorated the 70th anniversary last week of the "228 Incident," the Feb. 28, 1947, mass uprising by native Taiwanese that was brutally crushed by the Kuomintang (KMT) government of the Republic of China, which took control of the island following the end of colonial rule by Japan two years earlier. Today's government in Beijing should be reminded that people of Taiwan cherish their freedom and democracy, and its high-handed approach toward the island — which it considers a renegade providence that must be brought back into the fold — is only raising tensions in cross-strait relations and causing feelings of revulsion among Taiwanese.
Behind the uprising 70 years ago was the people's loathing of corruption and mismanagement by Chiang Kai-shek's KMT regime, which ruled the island from its base in Nanjing before it was driven out of mainland China by Mao Zedong's communist forces. The native Taiwanese, having lived under Japanese rule for 50 years, initially welcomed the new regime, but it soon became clear that things did not turn out as they had wanted.
The Taiwanese are said to have jeered the change of rule with the phrase, "After dogs are gone, pigs have arrived" — meaning that the dogs (Japan), were noisy but useful as watchdogs, but the pigs (the KMT rulers) were busy feeding themselves and did no work.