Ukraine has changed how Taiwanese see themselves

NO DATE in the Taiwanese calendar is more poignant than February 28th. Starting on that day in 1947, and continuing over the weeks that followed, China’s Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist) government, which had taken over Taiwan on Japan’s surrender two years previously, put down an uprising by islanders sick of the KMT’s harsh and corrupt administration. It did so with utter ruthlessness. By the time the revolt was over, tens of thousands of civilians had been gunned down or executed, including much of the island’s intelligentsia.