In 1947--and thereafter--there has certainly been more than an "impression" that the KMT and its leading henchmen of that era were "plagued by nepotism, corruption, and economic failure". Moreover, 228 or 2-28 became a buzzward to resistance against the KMT's martial control of the land over the subsequent decades.
Online are several books on the so-called "incidents" of February 28. Here is the link to this classic, FORMOSA BETRAYED.
http://www.romanization.com/books/formosabetrayed/
Regarding this important work, by George H. Kerr, "This book is a damning indictment of the KMT administration in Taiwan in the years just after World War II. It contains detailed information on Chiang Kai-shek, Chen Yi, 2-28 (the massacre of thousands of Taiwanese that began February 28, 1947), and many other subjects."
"George H. Kerr, the author of the book, was in Taiwan during that time, serving as vice consul at the U.S. consulate." It took the author. George Kerr, 18 years to publish this account in the USA. (Kerr was forced to leave his beloved second home in March of 1947, i.e. while the massacres were taking place.) The U.S. did not want to hear much during the McCarthy Era about how bad the Chiang Kai-Shek regime was to the millions of Taiwanese people it subjugated after the withdrawal of USA controls of the island, i.e.s as a protectorate (for the United Nations) after WWII.
Unlike the government of Japan, who had occupied Taiwan from 1895 through 1945, the incoming government of the KMT took the best for itself but left no major construction projects, like trains and railroad networks for the first few decades. Instead in the first two or three years after the war, equipment and infrastructure from Taiwan were simply schlepped back to the Mainland to the KMT's few strongholds .
In his introduction to FORMOSA BETRAYED, Kerr's supporters noted that after the Japanese had left their brutal occupation of the island, 80% of the Formosa (Taiwan's) population was literate--which was the opposite of what the KMT had left conditions in mainland China like--after 30 years of power there.
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