Chiang Kai-shek and the 28 February 1947 Incident: A Reassessment

Abstract

The objective of this research is to reconsider Chiang Kai-shek’s responsibility in causing and resolving the 28 February 1947 Incident (2-28) using a range of the new archive material now available to historians in Taiwan and to provide our own interpretation of the secondary literature on the Incident. Moreover we are concerned with reintroducing the relevance of agency into the early history of the Kuomintang’s (KMT’s) involvement in Taiwan, but to do so in a way that demonstrates the interaction of agents with structures. To meet these dual objectives we identify areas of principal investigation that drive the study toward a detailed consideration of Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership style and political agenda: the interaction between Chiang and factions in Taiwan in 1947 which has been overshadowed by the simplicity of the Mainlander-Taiwanese dichotomy, and thus ignores the complexity of the crisis.