Military Power Purge

In the turbulent historical crossroads of the 1950s Cold War escalation, after the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek’s regime moved swiftly to establish absolute personal authoritarian control over the island. Beyond the large-scale suppression of civilian dissent, the purge also turned inward toward the military itself. The 1955 “Sun Li-jen Coup Plot Case” — also known as the “Kuo Ting-liang Rebellion Case” — became not only the largest and highest-level military purge during Taiwan’s authoritarian era, but also a historical turning point in which the party-state dismantled potential American influence within Taiwan’s armed forces and transformed the military into a fully politicized instrument of personal and party rule.

At the center of this historical tragedy stood General Sun Li-jen, one of the most celebrated Chinese commanders of the Second World War. A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute in the United States, Sun earned international acclaim for leading Chinese Expeditionary Forces to major victories against Japan in the Burma Campaign, winning deep respect from Allied commanders and American political leaders alike. After the war, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Commander of Taiwan Defense Command, where he established the Army Training Command in Fengshan and personally trained what became the most modernized elite force in postwar Taiwan.

Yet Sun Li-jen had also been deeply influenced by Western democratic ideals regarding civil-military relations. He firmly advocated for the “nationalization of the military,” insisting that the armed forces should serve the state rather than any political party or individual ruler. He strongly opposed Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo’s efforts to impose the Political Warfare system and party apparatus throughout the military. His unwavering commitment to military professionalism — combined with his immense prestige in American eyes, which in some respects exceeded even Chiang Kai-shek’s — increasingly made the Chiang father and son view him as a dangerous political threat during a fragile period of consolidating power.

Following the signing of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty in 1954, Chiang Kai-shek secured stronger backing from Washington and stabilized his rule over Taiwan. Rumors within diplomatic circles that the United States had once quietly considered replacing Chiang with Sun Li-jen gradually faded away. For Chiang Kai-shek, the moment had arrived to eliminate the powerful army commander who refused to submit fully to party control.

In May 1955, under the direction of Chiang Ching-kuo, Taiwan’s intelligence agencies launched a sweeping crackdown. They first arrested Major Kuo Ting-liang, one of Sun Li-jen’s closest subordinates, before expanding the purge to more than three hundred officers who had either been promoted by Sun or trained through the Fengshan military academy system. Secret police employed brutal torture methods to force Kuo into signing fabricated confessions alleging plans to launch an armed coup during a military parade in Pingtung, while accusing General Sun of serving as the hidden mastermind behind the so-called rebellion.

In August 1955, Chiang Kai-shek formally removed Sun Li-jen from his post as Senior Military Adviser to the Presidential Office. A secret “Nine-Man Investigation Committee” organized by the Ministry of National Defense then conducted a closed military tribunal. Although the regime ultimately refrained from executing Sun — partly out of concern for American reaction and Sun’s international reputation — he was placed under indefinite house arrest at his residence on Xiangshang Road in Taichung.

That confinement lasted for thirty-three years.

Only after Chiang Ching-kuo’s death in 1988 and Taiwan’s subsequent democratization was Sun finally released. By then, the once-renowned anti-Japanese war hero was already eighty-eight years old. Meanwhile, the more than three hundred implicated officers were subjected to unjust trials, severe prison sentences, or dismissal from service, effectively destroying an entire generation of Taiwanese military elites trained in modern American-style military doctrine.

Viewed through the broader lens of history, the 1955 Sun Li-jen case was far more than a simple miscarriage of military justice. It represented the decisive consolidation of authoritarian dictatorship within Taiwan. Through this purge, the Chiang regime eradicated the last liberal faction within the military that opposed party indoctrination and political warfare control, successfully transforming the national armed forces into a private instrument of the Chiang family and the Kuomintang state.

Thereafter, ideological control within the military intensified dramatically. Political indoctrination programs such as the Juguang political education system, alongside an extensive party supervision network, came to dominate military promotions, thought, and loyalty. Taiwan subsequently entered more than three decades in which intelligence agencies and political warfare officers exercised overwhelming control over the armed forces.

Today, the former residence of General Sun Li-jen in Taichung — now preserved as a memorial hall — still contains the roses personally planted by the general himself. In 2011, Taiwan’s Control Yuan formally exonerated Sun Li-jen and the officers implicated in the case after extensive historical investigation.

As contemporary Taiwanese society revisits this military tragedy, long obscured for half a century, the scars left by the purge continue to serve as a solemn historical warning. The story reminds later generations that the principles of military neutrality and constitutional democracy were not achieved without sacrifice. Behind them lie the blood, suffering, and shattered lives of men like Sun Li-jen and his subordinates — individuals who refused to surrender military honor and professional integrity before the machinery of personal dictatorship.