Directed by provincial governor Chen Yi and president Chiang Kai-shek, thousands of civilians were killed beginning on February 28.

Local residents became resentful of what they saw as high-handed and frequently corrupt conduct on the part of the Kuomintang (KMT) authorities, including the arbitrary seizure of private property, economic mismanagement, and exclusion from political participation.

The flashpoint came on February 27, 1947, in Taipei, when agents of the State Monopoly Bureau struck a Taiwanese widow suspected of selling contraband cigarettes.

[8] Soldiers fired upon demonstrators the next day, after which a radio station was seized by protesters and news of the revolt was broadcast to the entire island.

The commission was given the power to award to the family of anyone who died in the period of the insurrection and the restoration of Nationalist government rule an amount of NT$6,000,000, about US$150,000.

[14] After World War II, Taiwan was placed under the administrative control of the Republic of China to provide stability until a permanent arrangement could be made.

Chen Yi, the governor-general of Taiwan, arrived on October 24, 1945, and received the last Japanese governor, Ando Rikichi, who signed the document of surrender on the next day.

The KMT's nation-building efforts followed this ideology because of unpleasant experiences with the diverging forces during the Warlord Era in 1916–1928 that had torn the government in China.

[citation needed] On the evening of February 27, 1947, a Tobacco Monopoly Bureau enforcement team in Taipei went to the district of Taiheichō [zh] (太平町), Twatutia (Dadaocheng in Mandarin), where they confiscated contraband cigarettes from a 40-year-old widow named Lin Jiang-mai (林江邁) at the Tianma Tea House.

When she demanded their return, one of the men struck her in the head with the butt of his gun,[8] prompting the surrounding Taiwanese crowd to challenge the Tobacco Monopoly agents.

[20] Protesters gathered the next morning around Taipei, calling for the arrest and trial of the agents involved in the previous day's shooting, and eventually made their way to the Governor General's Office, where security forces tried to disperse the crowd.

[21] On March 4, the Taiwanese took over the administration of the town and military bases and forced their way into a local radio station to broadcast news of the incident and call for people to revolt, causing uprisings to erupt throughout the island.

[23][24] Within a few days, the Taiwanese were generally coordinated and organized, and public order in Taiwanese-held areas was upheld by volunteer civilians organised by students and unemployed former Japanese army soldiers.

They demanded, among other things, greater autonomy, free elections, the surrender of the ROC Army to the Settlement Committee, and an end to government corruption.

[25] The Taiwanese also demanded representation in the forthcoming peace treaty negotiations with Japan, hoping to secure a plebiscite to determine the island's political future.

[29] By late March 1947, the central executive committee of the KMT had recommended that Chen Yi be dismissed as governor-general over the "merciless brutality" he had shown in suppressing the rebellion.

[33] The 18,000 - 28,000 range has been challenged by several individuals, most prominently by Hau Pei-tsun, who in a letter published in the Chinese-language United Daily News in Feb. 2012, questioned whether “over 10,000 were killed” in the 228 Incident.

[34] However, others have contended that the veil of secrecy under the martial law period and taboo of discussing the matter had contributed to this low number, particularly as many descendants of victims may have been unaware that their relatives perished.

[citation needed] Another critique of the common figure came from Marvin C. H. Ho, the president of the Taipei Language Institute and a member of the commission that issued the report.

The subsequent feelings of betrayal felt towards the government and China are widely believed to have catalysed today's Taiwan independence movement post-democratization.

[38] In the 1970s, the 228 Justice and Peace Movement was initiated by several citizen groups to ask for a reversal of this policy[citation needed] and in 1992, the Executive Yuan promulgated the "February 28 Incident Research Report".

Then-president and KMT chairman Lee Teng-hui, who had participated in the incident and was arrested as an instigator and a Communist sympathizer, made a formal apology on behalf of the government in 1995 and declared February 28 a day to commemorate the victims.

In October 1995, the state-funded Memorial Foundation of 228 (二二八事件紀念基金會) was established to distribute compensation again and award rehabilitation certificates to victims of the February 28 incident in order to restore their reputation.

On the other hand, some survivors thought the arrest and questioning had more to do with looting and riot participation as many unemployed citizens had just been discharged from the Japanese Imperial Army from overseas.

Chiang Kai-Shek, despite all information he gathered from the party, government, army, intelligence, and representative of Taiwanese groups, still chose to send troops right away; he summoned commander of the 21st division Liu Yu-Cing.

Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness, the first movie that addressed the events, won the Golden Lion at the 1989 Venice Film Festival.