Purge of Indigenous Elites

Beneath the shadow of Cold War confrontation and martial law in the mid-twentieth century, Taiwan’s authoritarian government launched sweeping campaigns to consolidate control over the island’s mountainous regions, natural resources, and indigenous communities. Determined to eliminate all potential local autonomy movements and prevent any perceived communist infiltration, the regime carried out systematic political purges across every level of society.

Among these crackdowns, the “Kao Yi-sheng and Tang Shou-jen Case” — also known as the “Alishan Indigenous Rebellion Case” — which unfolded between 1952 and 1954, stands as one of the most tragic and consequential chapters in modern Indigenous Taiwanese history. The case not only nearly annihilated the first generation of postwar Indigenous intellectuals and political leaders, but also violently extinguished the early seeds of Indigenous self-governance movements, forcing Taiwan’s mountain communities back under the suffocating surveillance of the party-state.

At the center of this historical tragedy stood Kao Yi-sheng, known in the Tsou language as Uongu Yatauyungana — a visionary Indigenous leader whose intellect and international outlook were extraordinary for his era.

Educated under Japanese colonial rule, Kao received elite modern training and graduated from Tainan Normal School. He was fluent in Russian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Tsou, and possessed remarkable literary and musical talent, composing several Tsou songs that remain cultural classics today.

After the war, the Nationalist government appointed Kao as the first township chief of Wufeng Township — today’s Alishan Township in Chiayi County. Kao understood clearly that if Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples were to survive the arrival of a new regime with dignity intact, they would need both economic independence and political autonomy.

To that end, he promoted the ambitious “New Highland Reclamation Project,” encouraging Indigenous communities to collectively relocate and cultivate lowland agricultural land. He also fought to ensure that revenues from Alishan forestry operations would remain within local communities to fund schools, healthcare, and infrastructure in Indigenous regions.

Standing beside Kao Yi-sheng was another prominent Tsou intellectual and former wartime officer: Tang Shou-jen, known in Tsou as Yabpasu Uyonguana.

Tang had graduated from Japanese military academies during the colonial era and served overseas during the Second World War, earning widespread respect for his military ability and leadership. After returning to Taiwan, he became deeply troubled by the poverty and political marginalization facing Indigenous communities under the new regime.

Together, Kao and Tang advocated an unprecedented idea for their time: “mountain autonomy.”

They envisioned a broad Indigenous alliance transcending tribal boundaries, one that would demand recognition of Indigenous land ownership over ancestral territories while pursuing genuine local self-government. Their political philosophy blended traditional Indigenous identity with modern ideas of citizenship, human rights, and democratic autonomy.

But within the rigid logic of Taiwan’s one-party authoritarian state, such ideas were viewed as dangerously subversive. Calls for Indigenous self-governance appeared to the regime as a challenge to centralized authority itself, drawing increasing suspicion from intelligence agencies and secret police.

As Cold War tensions intensified in the early 1950s, Chiang Kai-shek’s government expanded nationwide crackdowns against all organizations deemed politically unreliable. Around 1952, intelligence agencies intensified efforts to dismantle underground communist networks linked to the Taiwan Provincial Working Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

During these investigations, authorities discovered that Tang Shou-jen had participated in local resistance activities during the February 28 Incident and had maintained contact with certain underground activists afterward. Although both Kao Yi-sheng and Tang Shou-jen later surrendered voluntarily and handed over weapons in hopes of protecting their communities from collective punishment, the state had already identified these Indigenous leaders — charismatic, armed, and respected among their people — as dangerous obstacles that had to be eliminated.

On September 10, 1952, the purge began.

Under the pretext of convening a “Mountain Security Conference,” intelligence agents lured Kao Yi-sheng, Tang Shou-jen, and several Indigenous local leaders down from the mountains to Chiayi. The moment they entered the meeting site, armed security agents emerged from hiding, forced them to the ground, and placed them in handcuffs.

Simultaneously, sweeping arrests spread throughout the Alishan region. Nearly all major Indigenous intellectuals and political figures of the postwar generation were detained, including Wang Ching-shan, Fang Yi-chung, the Atayal leader Lin Jui-chang, and Kao Tse-chao.

The arrested leaders were transferred to the notorious underground prisons of the Taiwan Garrison Command, where they endured endless interrogation and torture.

To legitimize the purge, the authorities accused them not only of conspiring to overthrow the government but also fabricated charges of embezzlement and theft of mountain development resources. The regime sought not merely to destroy them physically, but also to ruin their moral reputations within Indigenous society itself.

During more than a year of secret imprisonment and military trials, Kao Yi-sheng wrote dozens of letters to his wife and children from prison. Written partly in Japanese and partly in Tsou, these farewell letters contained no bitterness or hatred. Instead, they were filled with longing for the mountains of Alishan and concern for how his family would survive in poverty after his death.

In one letter, he wrote:

“One day my injustice will be understood. You must live on bravely, and bloom again in spring like the cherry blossoms of Alishan.”

But the dictatorship offered no path to survival.

At dawn on April 17, 1954, following military sentences personally approved by Chiang Kai-shek, Kao Yi-sheng, Tang Shou-jen, Lin Jui-chang, Wang Ching-shan, Fang Yi-chung, and Kao Tse-chao were executed by firing squad at the Ankeng execution grounds in Taipei.

Before the execution, the six men reportedly exchanged silent glances and stood upright with dignity as they faced the rifles.

With the crack of gunfire echoing across the desolate morning field, an entire generation of Indigenous political, literary, military, and intellectual leadership was extinguished in a single moment. Their deaths marked the destruction of Taiwan’s first postwar Indigenous autonomy movement.

The terror unleashed by the arrests and executions quickly spread throughout Alishan and Indigenous communities across Taiwan.

Families of the accused were branded as relatives of “communist rebels.” Their property was confiscated, and many were forced into decades of poverty, surveillance, and social isolation. Fear spread through mountain villages where discussions of politics, Indigenous rights, or even cultural identity became dangerous taboos.

More devastating still, the state used the purge to expand direct control over Indigenous territories. Traditional land rights were stripped away, while assimilation campaigns such as the “National Language Movement” and “Life Improvement Campaigns” aggressively suppressed Indigenous languages, customs, and identity. For nearly three decades, Taiwan’s Indigenous communities endured a profound period of collective silence and cultural rupture.

Viewed through the broader lens of history, the Kao Yi-sheng and Tang Shou-jen Case was far more than a political miscarriage of justice. It represented a devastating assault by the authoritarian state against Indigenous identity, autonomy, and self-determination under the geopolitical pressures of the Cold War.

Today, the Ankeng execution grounds have disappeared into history, while the convictions against the six Indigenous leaders have finally been overturned and formally rehabilitated. Their historical significance has gradually been restored within Taiwan’s collective memory.

And when modern Taiwan listens once again to Song of Spring — the haunting melody Kao Yi-sheng composed while imprisoned — its sorrowful echoes still seem to drift through the valleys of Yushan and Alishan.

The song reminds later generations that Taiwan’s democracy and diversity were not built solely through the struggles of Han political elites. They were also forged through the blood, suffering, and sacrifice of Indigenous peoples who, in the darkest years of authoritarian rule, fought to defend the dignity of their lands, cultures, and right to self-governance.