TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan is marking the 70th anniversary of a bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters that is widely seen as a rejection of China's claims to the self-governing island democracy.

The protests that began on Feb. 28, 1947, were directed at the corrupt rule of Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist Party that had taken control of the former Japanese colony less than two years earlier.

China considers the uprising a part of the overall struggle that led to the communist victory in 1949.

As many as 28,000 people were believed killed after Chiang dispatched troops to massacre participants in the largely peaceful protests, many of whom came from the Japanese-educated elite.

Suppressed under Nationalist rule, the uprising has become a rallying point for Taiwanese who say the island and China are separate nations.