Source: The Economist (5/1/25)
The terrible secrets of Taiwan’s Stasi files
Researchers have unearthed the surveillance records of Taiwan’s former dictatorship. But the revelations inside could tear society apart
By Alice Su

PHOTOGRAPHS: An Rong Xu
During the 1980s a young intellectual called Yang Bi-chuan used to give illicit history lectures in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Charismatic and fearless, with a frizz of unruly hair, Yang was only in his 30s, but had already served seven years in prison for angering the authoritarian government that ruled the island. A voracious reader and self-taught historian, he referred to himself as the Taiwanese Trotsky.
At that time, nobody was teaching the Taiwanese their own history. The lush, sub-tropical island, which sits 130km off the coast of China, was run by the exiled Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT). When Taiwan was mentioned in KMT-run schools and universities, it was merely as a footnote in the glorious 5,000-year-long history of China. Students at the National Taiwan University invited Yang to come to their classrooms after the day’s official lessons were over to fill in the gaps.
Taiwaneseness is a complicated concept. Some islanders are from indigenous ethnic groups, but most are descended from Han Chinese immigrants from the province of Fujian, who first arrived in the 16th century. The island has been colonised by various empires: the Dutch, the Spanish, the Qing dynasty, the Japanese. Yang talked about the distinctly Taiwanese sense of identity that was forged by enduring and resisting these waves of occupation. Dozens of students would gather to listen. Continue reading The terrible secrets of Taiwan’s Stasi files