Taiwan's White Terror

30-Second Overview: From 1949 to 1987, spanning 38 years and 56 days, Taiwan had at least 29,407 military trials, with over 20,000 confirmed victims and civilian estimates reaching 140,000 to 200,000. But what sustained this system for 38 years was not secret agents—there were only a few thousand of them; it was the "joint liability guarantee" system where every person in Taiwan had to find neighbors to vouch for them to work, enroll in school, or marry. The uncle running the grocery store downstairs from your house was your surveillance camera.

On the morning of May 28, 1963, in Machangting, Taipei, 46-year-old Chen Zhi-xiong was dragged out of his cell and taken to the execution ground. Knowing he would shout slogans loudly, the guards of the General Headquarters of the Military Police first chopped off the soles of his feet with an axe to prevent him from standing, stuffed a rag in his mouth, and pierced his cheeks with iron wire. ¹

But just before the gunshots rang out, he still shouted in Japanese: "Long live Taiwan! Long live the independence of Taiwan!"

Chen Zhi-xiong was a graduate of the Dutch department at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and a former official in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After the war, he returned to Taiwan to join the independence movement. In 1961, he organized the "Tongxin Society." Two years later, he became the first Taiwanese executed for "advocating Taiwan independence" during the 38-year martial law period. Sixty years after his death, a small group still holds memorial services for him every May 28. Most Taiwanese do not know this name.

This article discusses the machine that led Chen Zhi-xiong to Machangting, that put Shi Shui-huan on the list of colleagues at the Taipei Post and Tele Bureau, that lured Gao Yi-sheng down from Alishan, and that imprisoned Bo Yang for nine years for a comic strip—White Terror was not executed by anyone, but sustained by a system that turned all two million families on the island into a web of mutual surveillance.

From 29,407 to 140,000 — Why the Numbers Never Match

In November 1988, one year and four months after the lifting of martial law, Chen Shou-huang, the Chief Procurator of the Ministry of Justice, reported a number in the Legislative Yuan: during the 38 years of martial law, military organs sentenced a total of 29,407 cases of criminal cases involving non-active-duty military personnel. ²

This was the first official number. But all researchers know that this number is only the tip of the iceberg.

The "Taiwan Transitional Justice Database," launched by the Transitional Justice Commission in 2020,收录ed data on 14,946 political case adjudictees. ³ The Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that there were 1,061 death row inmates during the martial law period (as of 2013). ⁴ The Executive Yuan estimated in 2017 that the actual number of victims may exceed 200,000. ⁵

These numbers never match. The reason is not different statistical methods, but the fact that they are fundamentally unstatisticable: how many died while fleeing, how many were secretly executed, how many were killed while resisting arrest—the archives do not contain records. Cai Kuan-yu of the Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission stated that mainlanders accounted for 46% of the victims. ⁵ This number overturns the general impression that "White Terror equals the Kuomintang targeting locals." Once the machine started, anyone could be绞ged into it.

⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint
The number of victims of White Terror remains a political issue, not a statistical one. Conservatives tend to use the Ministry of Justice's 29,407, emphasizing that most people have records; pro-independence advocates tend to use 140,000 to 200,000, emphasizing the unknowability of underground victims. Both numbers are partially true because "truth" in that era was itself a systematically hidden commodity.

Joint Liability Guarantee — Who Sustained the 38-Year Martial Law

In the year Chen Zhi-xiong was executed, Taiwan's population was approximately 12 million. How many were secret agents? According to various historical materials, the actual personnel of the intelligence system, including the General Headquarters of the Military Police, the Security Command, the Bureau of Investigation, and the Youth Salvation Corps, totaled only a few thousand.

So what sustained it for 38 years?

It relied on every Taiwanese who wanted to work, enroll in school, or marry having to find 2 people willing to guarantee them.

This system was written in the "Regulations for Suppressing Bandits and Traitors during the Period of Rebellion" promulgated in 1950, called the "Joint Guarantee and Joint Liability System." ⁴ To be released from prison, convicts had to find 2 guarantors to fill out multiple guarantee forms: children could not guarantee parents, guarantors had to have certain property, and in addition to personal guarantees, there had to be merchant guarantees. The guarantee forms were sent to the local police station for verification, then to the General Police Bureau, then to the Military Justice Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense, and finally, the prison issued the release certificate. If the guaranteed person "re-offended," the guarantors would be held jointly liable.

This mechanism was not only used for release. For the appointment of public officials and teachers, school enrollment, applications to go abroad, and marriage registration, every daily action required a "clean certificate," and the clean certificate required someone to vouch for you.

📝 Curator's Note
On household registration books in Taiwan from the 1950s to the 1980s, many people had a red stamp next to their names: the name, address, and ID number of the guarantor. If you open an old household registration book today, you will see the relationships of relatives and neighbors from that era recorded in the form of political responsibility. Why your neighbor remembers you is because they guaranteed you; why your uncle stopped talking to your father for a while is because he refused to guarantee your father. Many of those silent, fractured, and tangled family relationships started from a single guarantee form.

Eyes Beyond the Secret Agents

In addition to the joint liability system, there was a network of informants. In 1983, there were over 5,000 informants on university campuses across Taiwan. ⁶ From 1980 to 2000, the number of citizens monitored by the Kuomintang government each year ranged between 7,000 and 15,000. ⁶

In the reports written by these informants, some recorded the sexual orientation, marital infidelity, and secret vices of dissidents. Some files discussed using "female psychological weaknesses" to strike at radical actors. ⁶ Information could be fabricated, exaggerated, or used as a tool for power struggles, but once it entered the files, it was real.

✦ "There are secret agents watching me at the door; I have to escape." — Words spoken by White Terror survivor Chen Meng-he to visitors while hospitalized and critically ill in his later years (from The Reporter's "Searching for Political Trauma Survivors")

Chen Meng-he was a political prisoner who had been imprisoned for more than ten years. After his release, he became a photographer, leaving images for other survivors. But on his hospital bed 60 years later, he still believed there were secret agents at the door. ⁷ You cannot say he remembered wrong. The greatest achievement of White Terror was making people remember for a lifetime.

Three Reasons for Arrest: Ideology, Relationships, Luck

The most terrifying thing about White Terror is not that it has clear standards, but that it does not.

Ideology: Bo Yang's Comic Strip (1968)

On January 3, 1968, the translated American comic strip Popeye appeared in the family section of the China Daily News. ⁸ The story involved Popeye and his father jointly purchasing an island, establishing a private country on the island, and the two competing for president. In Bo Yang's translation, the child said to Popeye: "There are only the two of us in the whole country, you know!"

The military trial court believed this sentence implied the two Jiangs (Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo). On March 7, Bo Yang was arrested and sentenced to 12 years by the military court. In 1975, upon the death of Chiang Kai-shek, his sentence was reduced to 8 years. On March 7, 1976, the day his sentence expired, he was transferred by the National Security Bureau to Green Island as a "custodial employee" to continue his imprisonment. It was not until April 1977, with the concern of the United States government, that he was released. ⁸

A total of 9 years and 26 days. For translating an American comic strip.

💡 Did You Know
During his nine years on Green Island, Bo Yang studied hard, reading Zizhi Tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), and completed the manuscripts for three books: The History of Chinese People, The Lineage of Emperors, Empresses, Princes, and Princesses in Chinese Dynasties, and The Chronology of Chinese History. After his release, he spent another ten years translating the Bo Yang Version of Zizhi Tongjian in 72 volumes. That prison cell turned him from a translator into a historian.

Relationships: Shi Shui-huan's Ceiling (1954)

Shi Shui-huan was born in 1926 in Tainan, graduated from Tainan Girls' Home Economics School, and worked as a clerk at the Taipei Post and Tele Bureau. She was 28 years old in 1954.

Her younger brother, Shi Cheng-sheng, was a National Taiwan University student. After being involved in the "NTU Branch Case," he went on the run, hiding in the ceiling of her Taipei dormitory for two years. On July 19, 1954, Shi Shui-huan was arrested for protecting her brother, and her colleagues Qian Jing-zhi and Ding Yao-tiao were implicated in the "Post and Tele Branch Case." ⁹ Two years later, on July 24, 1956, she was executed in Taipei at the age of 30. Her brother Shi Cheng-sheng's final whereabouts remain a mystery.

During her two years in prison, she wrote 69 letters to her mother. ¹⁰

✦ "Dear Mother, I don't know why my heart feels overwhelmingly sad tonight, with tears welling up in my eyes. But I still bite my lip and endure desperately, because I know I should not cry for Mother anymore, as that would only cause Mother more sorrow..." — Shi Shui-huan's prison letter (from the Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission's "Shi Shui-huan's Letters")

In the last letter, she wrote: "Every morning, as Mother instructed, I read the Bible and pray. May God's grace descend upon our whole family. Amen!" ¹⁰

The charge for her execution was "colluding with bandits." In reality, her crime was having an escaped brother.

Luck: The 896 Villagers of Lukang (1952)

From December 28 to 29, 1952, the Ministry of National Defense deployed thousands of military and police officers to surround the Lukang mountainous area in Shihding Township, Taipei County (now Guangming Village, Shihding District, New Taipei City), launching a massive search for the so-called "Taiwan People's Armed Guard Team." The underground organization led by Commander-in-Chief Chen Ben-jiang and Branch Secretary Chen Chun-qing did exist at the time, but most of the villagers they absorbed did not know what they had joined; some had simply given a bowl of rice to this group of fugitives. ¹¹

896 people were arrested. 135 people were sentenced, with 41 receiving the death penalty. ¹¹ Compensation payments eventually totaled NT$545.63 million, and the Control Yuan corrected the Ministry of National Defense. ¹¹ This was the largest political case in terms of scale during the White Terror period.

Former Director of the Academia Historica Zhang Yan-xian visited Lukang in his lifetime, conducting oral history interviews with over 100 villagers. ¹¹ The common characteristic of the villagers was that they could not clearly explain "what exactly happened that year." Not because they forgot, but because they never truly knew. Some did not know what organization they had "joined" until years after their release.

📝 Curator's Note
Director Wu Nian-zhen's films A City of Sadness and Ripples of Love have prototypes from Lukang. It is now called "Lukang Incident Memorial Park," which contains a memorial stele. In 2017, the son of the ringleader Chen Ben-jiang said at the memorial ceremony: "I apologize to everyone on behalf of my father." The apology of the perpetrators' descendants is very rare in White Terror memorial ceremonies.

Green Island's Beds and Gao Yi-sheng's Letters

In 1951, most political prisoners in Taiwan were concentrated on Green Island at the "New Life Training Corps" for ideological re-education. ¹² This institution existed until 1965, holding a maximum of 2,000 people, organized into 3 battalions and 12 companies, with each company having 120 to 160 people. ¹²

The "new lives" (prisoners were collectively called "new lives") attended three hours of ideological re-education classes every day: Sun Yat-sen's Last Will and Testament, the Leader's Words and Deeds, the Three Principles of the People, the atrocities of the Communist bandits, and the critique of communism. The rest of the time was spent on labor: building houses, repairing roads, and growing vegetables.

Victim Zhang Ze-zhou later returned to the rebuilt barracks: "There were not enough beds; many people had to sleep on the floor, and I was often woken up by many people stepping on me while sleeping on the floor!" ¹²

Between 1953 and 1956, the New Life Training Corps also experienced the "Re-rebellion Case": people already serving sentences on Green Island were accused of continuing to organize networks within the prison, leading to new sentences and further transfers to heavier punishments. ¹² Some were therefore imprisoned on Green Island for another ten-plus years.

Gao Yi-sheng's 60 Letters

Gao Yi-sheng (Tsou name: Uyongu Yatauyungana, 1908–1954) was a Tsou leader from Alishan, a musician, an educator, and the first elected township chief of Wufeng Township (now Alishan Township). On September 10, 1952, he was lured down from Alishan by the bait of the "Mountain Security Conference" and imprisoned in the military justice detention center at No. 3 Qingdao East Road, Taipei. ¹³

During his two years in prison, he wrote 60 family letters in Japanese to send back to Alishan. ¹³ On April 17, 1954, he and five others were executed in Taipei. The charge was "bandit spy gathering and rebellion."

The content of those letters was mostly trivial: to plant rice well, to take care of the children, to believe in God. Half a year before his execution, he wrote: "If I can return home safely, I will continue to work for the tribe."

On World Human Rights Day in 2013, Gao Yi-sheng's son, Gao Ying-jie, donated these 60 letters to the National Human Rights Museum. In 2020, the Ministry of Culture officially published Gao Yi-sheng's Prison Letters—this was the first book publication outcome of Taiwan's Indigenous Transitional Justice. ¹⁴ Half a century later, the Tsou people could finally read their leader's final voice in full.

📝 Curator's Note
Gao Ying-jie, Gao Yi-sheng's son, said at the donation ceremony that he had read those letters for decades, but only now did he truly understand them—because his father wrote in Japanese, and Gao Ying-jie's generation was raised by the Nationalist government forbidden to speak Japanese. White Terror did not just kill a Tsou tribal leader; it also severed the common language between two generations. The words the father wrote were unreadable to the son; this is the deepest form of violence in White Terror.

Why This History Has Not Ended

It is easy to say "White Terror is over." Martial law was lifted in 1987, the Regulations for Punishing Rebellion were abolished in 1991, the Compensation Foundation was established in 1995, and the Transitional Justice Commission began operations in 2018. The state machine has not killed for 38 years.

But open the family history of any Taiwanese born in the 1950s–1980s, flip to the pages about their parents, and the word "guarantee" often appears, followed by a pause. His uncle refused to guarantee; his neighbor once guaranteed; his grandfather almost lost his job because he had no guarantor. That pause is where White Terror has not yet ended.

Chen Zhi-xiong was executed in Machangting in 1963. Gao Yi-sheng was executed in Taipei in 1954. Shi Shui-huan was executed in Taipei in 1956. Their families spent half a century before daring to publicly speak these names. Taiwan's transitional justice revoked 5,983 guilty verdicts, ³ established memorial parks, and built memorial steles.

But the descendants of the 5,000 university campus informants still live, work, and vote in Taiwan. What their fathers or grandfathers did is not subject to a "decontamination law" requiring them to speak clearly. ⁶ The so-called "past" has never been publicly reconciled.

This is not hatred; it is a ledger. The day White Terror ends will not be the day martial law was lifted, nor the day the Transitional Justice Commission dissolved. It will be the day Taiwanese society is willing to admit: the system that turned two million families into a web of mutual surveillance, its traces are still carved into our anxiety towards neighbors, strangers, and the two words "guarantee."

Further Reading:

• Taiwan's Democratic Transition — The full picture of the forty-year transition from martial law to Asia's most free democratic system
• Martial Law Era — The legal container of 38 years and 56 days and the process of lifting martial law
• Taiwan's Transitional Justice — The unfinished business of truth-seeking and holding perpetrators accountable after the lifting of martial law
• February 28 Incident — The prelude to White Terror: how the 1947 suppression foreshadowed the martial law system
• Beautiful Island Incident — A major turning point in the late White Terror in 1979
• Alishan: The Empire's Forest and Gao Yi-sheng's Mountain — The story of Gao Yi-sheng's mountain and the silenced ethnic group
• Yin Haiguang — A professor of philosophy at National Taiwan University who was placed under house arrest at No. 18 Wenzhou Street after the 1960 Lei Zhen case, the founder of Taiwan's liberalism

References