| Summary/Abstract |
This paper examines the 228 Uprising, which occurred in February 1947 in post-war Taiwan, employing Michael Mann’s IMEP model as the primary analytical framework and suggesting that the uprising was in nature an ethnic conflict heavily influenced by at least four types of structural factors: political, military, economic and ideological. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: What were the structural factors that contributed to the 228 Uprising? How should we interpret these factors to understand the nature of the uprising? Why did the Taiwanese people who participated in the riots act so violently against the provincial government in Taiwan? Factionalism and a low level of the state power were serious political problems, which resulted in lax military discipline and a failed statist economic policy. These military and economic conditions fuelled ideological discourses that called for democracy and self-governance by the Taiwanese. Moreover, the negative interactions between the Taiwanese and the Mainlanders contributed to the emergence of a Taiwanese ethnic identity and echoed those discourses. It can be argued that Taiwanese elites and masses fused their ethnic identity with their ideal of democracy. Thus, in the eyes of many Taiwanese participating in the uprising, that fusion justified violent actions against Chen Yi’s provincial regime and the military establishment in Taiwan.
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