Zhongli incident

Main article: Taiwan after World War II

See also: Kuomintang

Zhongli Incident
Traditional Chinese	中壢事件
Simplified Chinese	中坜事件
Transcriptions Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Zhōnglì Shìjiàn

The Zhongli Incident was a riot in the Taiwanese town of Zhongli in response to the use of paper ballots in a local election, which voters believed increased the possibility that the election would be rigged.

Historical background

Between 1971 and 1977, an opposition group of candidates for political office began to coalesce in Taiwan. At this stage there was not a single unified opposition party; martial law under the Kuomintang prevented the formation of one. Taiwanese politicians not linked to the Kuomintang had been able to run for office and had done so (especially in local government elections) during the 1950s and 1960s. Few of them were elected to national or provincial posts, largely because of their lack of resources, and the fact that the government-controlled press always supported the Kuomintang dictatorship. The gradual emergence of a sense of Taiwanese identity and the growing discontent meant that electoral oppositionists (known as the Tangwai movement, literally, "outside the party") began to attract more support. They were helped by an international factor: the normalisation of relations between Washington and Beijing. Since the Kuomintang's legitimacy was based on the idea that it was the legitimate government of China, the fact that most of the world did not believe it to be so damaged its prestige. At local elections in 1977, the Kuomintang lost ground to Tangwai candidates.

Incident

In 1977, the loose group of opposition candidates won 34% of the vote in the elections for the Taiwan Provincial Assembly. The growing opposition began to have an effect inside the Kuomintang. One popular figure, Hsu Hsin-liang, left the party and ran as a Tangwai for a local county magistrate's position in November 1977. Hsu Hsin-liang was an unpredictable political figure, self labelled as a "socialist", who wanted to maintain the Taiwanese economic base while humanising its class structure. He vigorously advocated parliamentary democracy and Taiwan independence, and frequently attacked the [[Sovereign state|state's political corruption and systematic violation of human rights. Hsu commonly spoke Hakka at public rallies, in defiance of the Kuomintang's insistence on Mandarin Chinese.

Afraid that the Kuomintang would rig the election, 10,000 of Hsu's supporters gathered in the town of Zhongli to object to the use of paper ballots. Believing there was election fraud, the protestors rioted, burning down the Zhongli police station. The Kuomintang called in soldiers to suppress the riot (some 90% of whom were Taiwanese youths) and in response the protestors, en masse, cried out that the state was "beating their fellow Taiwanese".

The riot became known as the "Zhongli incident"^[1]. It was the first political protest on the streets since the 1940s.

After the event, the regime's policy of riot control was to use police and military police for such purposes. The incident galvanised dissidents with a surge of hope.

Legacy

Two years later (in December 1979) the Kuomintang arrested all of the leaders of the anti-Kuomintang movement who had organised a gathering at Kaohsiung on International Human Rights Day. The purge is known as the Ilha Formosa Meilitao Incident or, more simply, the Kaohsiung Incident ^[2]. The entire leadership was sentenced to long prison terms, including DPP politician Chen Chu, and Shi Ming-teh, labelled as Taiwan's Nelson Mandela, who was handed a life sentence. Shi was later released with the arrival of democracy.

Notes and references

1. ^ The Unknown Taiwan, Political Developments
2. ^ Minns, John and Robert Tierney, The Labour Movement in Taiwan. Labour History 85 (Nov 2003): 92 pars. 27 Dec. 2006

Coordinates: 24°57′14.72″N 121°13′20.10″E / 24.9540889°N 121.22225°E / 24.9540889; 121.22225