Taiwan White Terror

30-Second Overview: From 1949 to 1987, spanning 38 years and 56 days, Taiwan had at least 29,407 military trial cases, with over 20,000 confirmed victims and民间 estimates reaching between 140,000 and 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 everyone 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 home was your surveillance camera.

On the morning of May 28, 1963, in Machangting, Taipei, 46-year-old Chen Chih-hsiung was dragged out of his cell and escorted to the execution ground. Knowing he would shout slogans loudly, the guards of the General Command of the Army and Navy first chopped off the soles of his feet with an axe, leaving him unable to stand, then stuffed a rag in his mouth and pierced his cheeks with iron wire. ¹

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

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

This article discusses the machine that led Chen Chih-hsiung to Machangting, that caused Shih Shui-huan to die on the list of colleagues at the Taipei Postal and Telecommunications Bureau, that lured Gao Yi-sheng down from Alishan, and that imprisoned Bo Yang for nine years for a single 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 Public Prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice, reported a figure to the Legislative Yuan: during the 38 years of martial law, military organs sentenced a total of 29,407 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 Transition Justice Database, launched by the Promotion of Transitional Justice Commission in 2020, contains data on 14,946 political case defendants. ³ The Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission, meanwhile, statistics show that there were 1,061 death row prisoners 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 impossible to count: how many died while fleeing, how many were secretly executed, how many were killed while resisting arrest—the archives do not have records. Cai Kuan-yu from the Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission stated that Mainlander victims accounted for 46%. ⁵ This number overturns the general impression that "White Terror equals the Kuomintang targeting locals." Once the machine started, anyone could be绞 (绞入/joined) into the grinder.

⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint
The number of White Terror victims remains a political issue, not a statistical one. Conservatives tend to use the Ministry of Justice's 29,407, emphasizing that most people have case records; 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 commodity systematically hidden.

Joint Liability Guarantee — Who Maintained 38 Years of Martial Law

In the year Chen Chih-hsiung 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 Command of the Army and Navy, the Security Command, the Bureau of Investigation and 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 Bandit 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 household registration police station for verification, then to the Police General 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 "reoffended," 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 record," and a clean record required someone to vouch for you.

📝 Curator's Note
On household registers 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 register today, you will see the relationships of relatives and neighbors from that era recorded in the form of political responsibility. Why did your neighbor remember you? Because he guaranteed you. Why did your uncle stop talking to your father for a while? Because he refused to guarantee your father. Those silent, fractured, and tangled family relationships often started from a single guarantee form.

Eyes Beyond 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 Between 1980 and 2000, the number of citizens monitored by the Kuomintang government annually 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 considered true.

✦ "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 "Finding Political Trauma Victims")

Chen Meng-he was a political prisoner imprisoned for over ten years. After his release, he became a photographer, leaving images of 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 was not that it had clear standards, but that it did 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 a small island, establishing a private nation 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 alluded to 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 Chiang Kai-shek's death, his sentence was reduced to 8 years. On March 7, 1976, the day his sentence expired, he was ordered by the National Security Bureau to be transferred to Green Island as a "guard employee" to continue his imprisonment. It was not until April 1977, following concern from 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 the Zizhi Tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), and completed three manuscripts: 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: Shih Shui-huan's Ceiling (1954)

Shih Shui-huan was born in 1926 in Tainan. She graduated from Tainan Girls' Home Economics School and worked as a clerk at the Taipei Postal and Telecommunications Bureau. In 1954, she was 28 years old.

Her younger brother, Shih Cheng-sheng, was a student at National Taiwan University. After becoming involved in the "NTU Branch Case," he went on the run, hiding in the ceiling of Shih Shui-huan's Taipei dormitory for two years. On July 19, 1954, Shih Shui-huan was arrested for protecting her brother, and her colleagues Qian Jingzhi and Ding Yaotiao were implicated in the "Postal and Telecommunications Branch Case." ⁹ Two years later, on July 24, 1956, she was executed in Taipei at the age of 30. The final fate of her brother, Shih Cheng-sheng, remains a mystery.

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

✦ "Dear Mother, I don't know why, but my heart feels suffocatingly sad tonight, and tears are swirling 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..." — Shih Shui-huan's prison letter (from the Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission's "Shih Shui-huan's Family 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 younger brother.

Luck: The 896 Villagers of Lukuku (1952)

From December 28 to 29, 1952, the Ministry of National Defense mobilized thousands of military and police officers to surround the Lukuku mountainous area in Shihkeng Township, Taipei County (now Guangmingli, Shihkeng District, New Taipei City), launching a massive search for the so-called "Taiwan People's Armed Guard Corps." The underground organization led by Commander-in-Chief Chen Ben-jiang and Branch Secretary Chen Chun-ching did indeed exist at the time, but most of the villagers they absorbed had no idea what they had joined; some had simply given the fleeing group a meal. ¹¹

896 people were arrested. 135 were sentenced, including 41 death sentences. ¹¹ Compensation payments eventually totaled NT$545.63 million, and the Control Yuan criticized 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, Chang Yan-hsien, visited Lukuku before his death, conducting oral history interviews with over 100 villagers. ¹¹ The common characteristic of the villagers was: 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 several years after their release.

📝 Curator's Note
Director Wu Nien-jen's films A City of Sadness and Dust in the Wind have prototypes from Lukuku. It is now called the "Lukuku 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 Bunks and Gao Yi-sheng's Letters

In 1951, most political prisoners in Taiwan were concentrated on Green Island at the "New Life Training and Guidance Center" for ideological transformation. ¹² This institution existed until 1965, holding up to 2,000 people at its peak, organized into 3 battalions and 12 companies, with each company holding 120 to 160 people. ¹²

The "new lives" (prisoners were collectively called "new lives") attended three hours of ideological transformation classes daily: 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. Other times were spent on labor: building houses, repairing roads, and growing vegetables.

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

Between 1953 and 1956, the New Life Training and Guidance Center also experienced the "Re-rebellion Case": people already serving sentences on Green Island were accused of continuing to organize connections in prison, sentenced again, and sent to serve even heavier sentences. 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 an Alishan Tsou leader, musician, educator, and the first elected township mayor of Wu Feng 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 result of Taiwan's Indigenous Transitional Justice. ¹⁴ Half a century later, the Tsou people could finally read the voice of their leader before his death 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—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 written by the father 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 Transition 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 Chih-hsiung was executed in Machangting in 1963. Gao Yi-sheng was executed in Taipei in 1954. Shih 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 those 5,000 university campus informants still live, work, and vote in Taiwan. What their fathers or grandfathers did is not required to be clarified by any decontamination law. 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 Transition 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 unease towards neighbors, strangers, and the two words "guarantee."

Further Reading:

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

References