By accident, I stumbled on a Blog about the “2-28 Massacre” in Taiwan in 1947 when Kuomintang soldiers under orders from Cheng Kai-shek, an American ally, slaughtered about 30,000 Taiwanese citizens. It was the first time I’d heard of this incident. Source Blog: Patrick Cowsill
Taipei, Taiwan
When I typed into Google “Tiananmen Square protest”, 1 million 260 thousand (1,260,000) hits came back condemning the 1989 Massacre in Tiananmen Square. “Several hundred civilians have been shot dead by the Chinese army during a bloody military operation to crush a democratic protest in Peking’s (Beijing) Tiananmen Square. Source: BBC
Then I typed a similar question about the massacre in Taiwan by an American ally and 21,200 hits came back.
Here’s what the BBC had to say about the Taiwan incident, “The event was an uprising sparked by the beating of a female vendor by authorities for selling untaxed cigarettes. Between 18,000 and 28,000 people are said to have been killed in riots and a subsequent crackdown.” Source: BBC
Compare the language. When it was about the Communists, it was a “bloody military operation to crush a democratic protest” but when the killings were committed by an American ally, it was “an uprising…sparked by the beating of a female vendor by authorities….”
Of course, we will always remember the man standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Have you forgotten what happened in Taiwan yet?
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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[…] 2-28 Massacre in Taiwan […]
[…] In 1949, the Chinese Civil War ended and America’s ally for life Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan where he ruled as a brutal dictator until he died in 1976. For a peek into Chiang’s brutality, one example of many was his 2-28-1947 Massacre in Taiwan. […]
[…] that took place in Taiwan in 1947 where about 30,000 Taiwanese citizens were slaughtered during the 2-28 Massacre by troops of America’s ally Chang […]
[…] fate was decided by Chiang Kai-shek (a Han Chinese) when he ordered KMT troops to slaughter Taiwanese natives. He ruled Taiwan as a […]