On 28 February 1947, after officials beat a woman selling untaxed cigarettes in Taipei, protests spread across Taiwan against the administration installed by the Chinese Nationalist government two years earlier; Governor Chen Yi negotiated while requesting troops, and reinforcements arriving on 8 March carried out mass shootings and arrests that fell heavily on the island's educated elite. Martial law, imposed in 1949 and lifted only in 1987, underpinned the White Terror: military tribunals tried civilians for sedition and communist association, sending prisoners to the New Life Correction Centre on Green Island and executing several thousand at sites including Machangding in Taipei. President Lee Teng-hui issued a state apology in 1995, a compensation foundation and memorial were established, and the Transitional Justice Commission of 2018-22 opened archives, exonerated thousands and mapped the security apparatus. Estimates of the 228 death toll remain disputed, in part because household registration records were incomplete and in part because the subject was unmentionable for forty years; the figures also carry present-day political weight in arguments between parties over the Nationalist period.
The Chinese Nationalist government suppressed the 1947 uprising in Taiwan and then imprisoned and executed political suspects under four decades of martial law
Taiwan's population stood at about 6.1 million at the 1946 count and about 7.6 million by 1950 after the arrival of Nationalist troops and refugees from the mainland, implying roughly 6.5 million in 1947. Official post-authoritarian inquiries estimate 18,000-28,000 killed in the 228 Incident and its suppression, with some 140,000-200,000 people prosecuted and about 3,000-4,000 executed across the White Terror decades.
The low end reflects conservative scholarly estimates of 228 deaths (around 5,000) plus 3,000-4,000 executions in the White Terror; the high end reflects the upper bound of the official 1992 Executive Yuan estimate of 18,000-28,000 for 228 plus the executions. Britannica gives 10,000 to more than 30,000 for the White Terror era overall.
Taiwan's own Executive Yuan report and Transitional Justice Commission, working from military and security archives, documented the killings, military trials, torture and disappearances.
Taiwan