In Pingtung, a group of Taiwanese demonstrators sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" as they seized control of their town. It was early March 1947, and for a brief, extraordinary week, most of Taiwan was in the hands of its own people. The Settlement Committee, a coalition of legislators, students, lawyers, doctors, and labor organizers, had formed in the chaos following the February 28 Incident, and its members were racing against time. They knew reinforcement troops were being dispatched from mainland China. They knew that once those soldiers arrived, any hope of negotiation would vanish. On the evening of March 7, they delivered a list of 32 demands to the Office of Chief Executive Chen Yi. Two days later, the troops landed.
The February 28 Incident began with a confrontation between agents of the Monopoly Bureau and a widow selling untaxed cigarettes on the streets of Taipei. The agents confiscated her goods and beat her. When a bystander was shot and killed, the incident ignited an uprising that had been building for months. Since the handover of Taiwan from Japan to the Republic of China in 1945, the new provincial administration under Chief Executive Chen Yi had become a byword for corruption. Government monopolies controlled the sale of salt, tobacco, liquor, and camphor at inflated prices. Mainland appointees filled government posts that local Taiwanese had expected to hold. Conflicting and contradictory laws, many created to facilitate bribery, entangled daily life. By the time the cigarette vendor was beaten, the island's patience was exhausted.
During the first week after the uprising, governmental authority shrank to a handful of compounds and military garrisons. The Settlement Committee emerged as the de facto governing body, composed of elected officials, professionals, and ordinary citizens. Moderates on the committee pushed for reform of the corrupt provincial administration rather than outright rebellion against the ROC central government in Nanjing. Others discussed Taiwan independence or the possibility of becoming a U.S. protectorate. The committee's composition reflected the breadth of Taiwanese society, from high school students to seasoned lawyers. What united them was a conviction that the existing system was intolerable and a fear that their window for change was closing rapidly. Every day that passed without a formal proposal was a day closer to the arrival of mainland troops and the end of negotiation.
The 32 Demands called for sweeping reform across every dimension of governance. They proposed a Provincial Autonomy Law as the highest legal authority on the island, democratic election of all government commissioners, civil liberties protections including press freedom and the right to strike, and the abolition of the Chief Executive's office. Three demands specifically targeted the practice of installing mainland officials in Taiwanese government positions, requiring that at least two-thirds of commissioners be long-term residents. Economic reforms demanded the abolition of the Monopoly Bureau and its state-run monopolies. Military reforms sought to restrict military police to arresting only military personnel and to abolish the Taiwan Garrison Command. Social provisions guaranteed the rights of Taiwanese aborigines and called for the immediate release of people detained on dubious charges of treason or war crimes. The document was, in effect, a constitution for a democratic Taiwan.
The demands were delivered on the evening of March 7. The committee's fear was precise: if Chief Executive Chen Yi could stall until reinforcements arrived from the mainland, he would lose no face by simply ignoring the proposals. That is exactly what happened. ROC troops landed on the morning of March 9, and Chen Yi launched a systematic crackdown. The members of the Settlement Committee were specifically targeted for what the authorities called liquidation. Intellectuals, students, lawyers, doctors, anyone who had participated in the brief experiment in self-governance became a target. The scale of the killing that followed remains disputed, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 dead. The 32 Demands were buried along with the people who wrote them, suppressed from public memory under decades of martial law. Today they are recognized as one of the earliest articulations of democratic self-governance in Taiwan's modern history, a document that arrived two days too late.
Coordinates: 25.043N, 121.510E in central Taipei, near the site where the Settlement Committee met. The 228 Peace Memorial Park, which commemorates the February 28 Incident, is at nearby coordinates. Taipei Songshan Airport (ICAO: RCSS) is approximately 5 km northeast. Taoyuan International Airport (RCTP) is 40 km west.