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 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 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, at Matanching in 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 first chopped off the soles of his feet with an axe to prevent him from standing, 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 Language 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 join the independence movement. In 1961, he organized the "Tongxin Society." Two years later, he became the first Taiwanese executed for "advocating the independence of Taiwan" 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 Chih-hsiung to Matanching, that put Shih Shui-huan on the list of colleagues at the Taipei Post and Telecommunications Bureau, that lured Gao Yi-sheng down from Alishan, and that imprisoned Bo Yang for nine years over a single cartoon—White Terror was not executed by anyone; it was 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 in the Legislative Yuan: during the 38 years of martial law, military organs sentenced a total of 29,407 criminal cases involving non-active-duty civilians. 2
This was the first official number. But all researchers know that this figure is only the tip of the iceberg.
| 29,407 Cases | 14,946 Records | 1,061 Individuals |
|---|---|---|
| Ministry of Justice Military Trial Cases | Transitioning Justice Commission Database Subjects | Confirmed Executions |
The Taiwan Transitioning Justice Database, launched by the Transitional Justice Commission in 2020,收录ed data on 14,946 political case subjects. 3 The Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that there were 1,061 death row prisoners during the martial law period (as of 2013). 4 The Executive Yuan further 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 record these. Cai Kuan-yu from the Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission stated that mainlanders accounted for 46% of the victims. 5 This figure overturns the general impression that "White Terror equals the Kuomintang targeting locals." Once the machine started, anyone could be绞入 (绞入 - caught in the gears).
⚠️ 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 cases are documented; 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 Sustained the 38-Year 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, 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 into the "Regulations for Suppression of Bandits and Spies during the Period of Communist 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 terms of political responsibility. Why your neighbor remembered 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. Those silent, fractured, and tangled family relationships often started from a single guarantee form.
Eyes Beyond the Secret Agents
Besides the joint liability system, there was also a network of informants. In 1983, there were over 5,000 informants in university campuses across Taiwan. 6 From 1980 to 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 archives, it was treated as 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 in his final years (from The Reporter's "Searching for Political Trauma Survivors")
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 Cartoon (1968)
On January 3, 1968, the translated American cartoon "Popeye" appeared in the family section of the Zhonghua Daily. 8 The story involved Popeye and his father buying an island together, establishing a private nation on the island, and 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. Bo Yang was arrested on March 7 and sentenced to 12 years by the military court. In 1975, upon Chiang Kai-shek's death, the sentence was reduced to 8 years. On March 7, 1976, the day his sentence expired, the National Security Bureau decided to transfer him to Green Island as a "guarding employee" to continue imprisonment. It was not until April 1977, under concern from the United States government, that he was released. 8
A total of 9 years and 26 days. For translating an American cartoon.
💡 Did You Know
During his nine years on Green Island, Bo Yang studied hard, completing the manuscripts for The Chinese People's History, The Lineage of Chinese Emperors, Empresses, Princes, and Princesses, and The Chronology of Chinese History. After his release, he spent another ten years translating the 72-volume Bo Yang's Version of Zizhi Tongjian. 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 Post and Telecommunications Bureau. In 1954, she was 28 years old.
Her younger brother, Shih Chih-cheng, was a National Taiwan University student. After becoming involved in the "NTU Branch Case," he went on the run, hiding in the ceiling of Shih Shui-huan's Taipei dormitory, hiding 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 "Post and Telecommunications Branch Case." 9 Two years later, on July 24, 1956, she was executed in Taipei at the age of 30. Her brother Shih Chih-cheng'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, but my heart feels suffocatingly sad tonight, and tears are spinning 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 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 personnel to surround the Lukang mountainous area in Shih-chiang Township, Taipei County (now Guangming Village, Shih-chiang 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-ching did indeed exist, but most of the villagers they absorbed had no idea what they had joined; some had simply given the fleeing group a bowl of rice. 11
896 people were arrested. 135 were sentenced, with 41 receiving the death penalty. 11 Compensation of NT$545.63 million was eventually issued, 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 Lukang and conducted 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 Nien-jen's 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 service: "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 Center" for ideological transformation. 12 This institution existed until 1965, holding a maximum of 2,000 people, organized into 3 battalions and 12 companies, with each company holding 120 to 160 people. 12
The "newborns" (a collective term for prisoners) 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 beds; many people had to sleep on the floor. I was often woken up by many people stepping on me because I slept on the floor!" 12
Between 1953 and 1956, the New Life Training 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 thus imprisoned on Green Island for another ten-plus years.
Gao Yi-sheng's 60 Letters
Gao Yi-sheng (Tao name: Uyongu Yatauyungana, 1908-1954) was a Tao leader from Alishan, a musician, an 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 letters to his family in Japanese, sending them 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: plant rice well, take care of the children, 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 Transition Justice. 14 Half a century later, the Tao people could finally read their leader's final voice in full.
📝 Curator's Note
Gao Ying-jie 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 Tao leader; it also severed the common language between two generations. The words the father wrote, the son could not understand. 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 Transitioning Justice Commission started 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 ended.
Chen Chih-hsiung was executed at Matanching 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 Transition 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, there is no de-Bonapartization law requiring them to clarify. 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 Transitioning 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 word "guarantee."
Further Reading:
- Taiwan's Democratic Transition — The full picture of the 40-year transition from martial law to Asia's most free democratic system
- Martial Law Period — The legal container of 38 years and 56 days and the process of lifting martial law
- Taiwan's Transition Justice — The unfinished business of truth investigation and perpetrator accountability after lifting martial law
- National Human Rights Museum — The institution of two White Terror memorial parks in Jingmei and Green Island, from six years of preparation to the 2025 budget freeze
- February 28 Incident — The prelude to White Terror, how the 1947 suppression foreshadowed the martial law system
- Beautiful Island Incident — An important turning point in the late White Terror period 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 — The National Taiwan University philosophy professor confined to No. 18 Wenzhou Street after the 1960 Lei Zhen case, the founder of Taiwan's liberalism
References
- New Taiwan Peace Foundation: Historical Today — Mr. Chen Chih-hsiung's Victim Day — Records the final details of the execution at Matanching on May 28, 1963, including axe chopping feet, iron wire piercing cheeks, and shouting "Long live the independence of Taiwan" in Japanese.↩
- Liberty Times: 10 Years of White Terror Wrongful Imprisonment / Broadcaster Cui Xiaoping Passes Away — Cites the official number reported by Chen Shou-huang, then Chief Public Prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice, in the Legislative Yuan's Internal Affairs Committee in 1988: a total of 29,407 criminal cases involving non-active-duty civilians sentenced by military organs during the 38 years of martial law.↩
- Transitional Justice Commission Official Website — Official statistics recording 14,946 political case subjects and 876 confirmed death sentences, with 5,983 guilty verdicts revoked during its four-year term.↩
- Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Introduction to White Terror — Independent research institution organizing details of the "Joint Guarantee and Joint Liability System" established by the 1950 "Regulations for Suppression of Bandits and Spies during the Period of Communist Rebellion," and statistics of 1,061 death row prisoners during martial law.↩
- Storm.MG: White Terror Mainlander Victims Reach 46%! Victim Cai Kuan-yu — Cites 2017 Executive Yuan estimates that actual victims may exceed 200,000, and presents analysis showing mainlander victims accounted for 46%, overturning general impressions.↩
- Wikipedia: White Terror (Taiwan) — Comprehensive English academic source整理的 monitoring system scale: 7,000-15,000 citizens monitored annually between 1980-2000, 5,000+ informants in university campuses in 1983, and analysis of intelligence archive content.↩
- The Reporter: Searching for Political Trauma Survivors — Those Victims, Their Families, and Us — In-depth report by Academia Sinica Assistant Researcher Peng Jen-yu interviewing White Terror survivors, recording Chen Meng-he's lifelong trauma case of still believing "there were secret agents at the door" in his final years.↩
- National Human Rights Memory Database: Bo Yang's Popeye Cartoon Case — The National Human Rights Museum's victim event database detailing the 1968 case where Bo Yang was sentenced to 12 years for translating the "Popeye" cartoon, and the details of being forcibly detained on Green Island after his sentence expired.↩
- Wikipedia: Shih Shui-huan — Records the complete timeline of Shih Shui-huan's arrest in 1954 due to her brother Shih Chih-cheng hiding for two years and colleagues implicated in the "Post and Telecommunications Branch Case," and her execution on July 24, 1956.↩
- Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Shih Shui-huan's Letters Carry the Elegy of White Terror — Records complete excerpts and historical background analysis of Shih Shui-huan's 69 letters to her mother written in prison, an important material for studying female victims of White Terror.↩
- Liberty Times: Small File / Lukang Incident Largest White Terror Case — Organizes complete data of the Lukang Incident occurring on December 28, 1952, arresting 896 people, sentencing 135, 41 death penalties, compensation of NT$545.63 million, and former Academia Historica Director Chang Yan-hsien interviewing 100+ villagers.↩
- National Human Rights Museum: New Life Training Center — Architectural history and operational details of the Green Island New Life Training Center (1951-1965), including holding 2,000 people, 3 battalions and 12 companies structure, three hours of daily ideological transformation classes, and excerpts from victim Chang Ze-zhou's memoirs.↩
- The Reporter: Echoes from a Distant Valley — The Unchosen Tao People and Forgotten Victims — In-depth report on Gao Yi-sheng's journey from Alishan Township Mayor to his execution on April 17, 1954, including the 1952 entrapment under the name of the "Mountain Security Conference" and the background of his prison letters.↩
- Ministry of Culture of the Republic of China: Milestone of Implementing Indigenous Transition Justice Gao Yi-sheng's Prison Letters New Book Published — 2020 Ministry of Culture publication news, recording Gao Ying-jie's donation of 60 letters to the National Human Rights Museum on World Human Rights Day in 2013, the process of 7 years of organization and translation, marking the first family letter publication for Indigenous Transition Justice.↩