Who was Wu Shi? If Guo Ruguai was the most famous Communist spy during the Chinese Civil War, then Wu Shi was the most renowned Communist spy after 1949. Considering that Wu Shi began his intelligence activities as early as 1948 during the Xuzhou-Bengbu Campaign, also known as the Huaihai Campaign, it is also fair to say that he was the most destructive Communist spy in Kuomintang history.

Some people believe that Wu Shi should be separated from the history of the White Terror. However, from the perspective of Forbidden Books Notes, the policy objective of the White Terror was to oppose communism, to serve as a pledge of allegiance to the U.S.-led anti-communist bloc in Asia. Therefore, the failure of the Chinese Civil War, McCarthyism, the Wu Shi case, the Korean War, and the White Terror are not isolated incidents but rather a chain of historical cause and effect. Wu Shi and the White Terror cannot be separated; forcibly doing so would lead to cognitive confusion.

The Monument to the People's Heroes in Beijing's Tiananmen Square bears an inscription: "Eternal glory to the people's heroes who sacrificed their lives in the people's war of liberation and the people's revolution since 1919." The monument commemorates not only the People's Liberation Army soldiers who died in the civil war but also the Kuomintang soldiers who sacrificed their lives in the War of Resistance Against Japan. From Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, successive Chinese Communist Party leaders have bowed, observed a moment of silence, and mourned before the Monument to the People's Heroes.

In contrast, political figures in Taiwan today are all focused on short-term gains in their historical narratives. When faced with difficulties, they use a "dimensional cutting knife" to sever parts of history that might cost them votes, retaining only what helps them in elections. When Wu Shi is needed, he is a victim of the White Terror; when he is not, he is a traitor who endangered Taiwan's national security.

If you criticize Wu Shi from a negative standpoint, it implies that you also accept the White Terror as a "necessary evil" of the Cold War era. Conversely, if you want to oppose the White Terror, you must first abandon the anti-communist ideology of the Cold War and view the Wu Shi case from the perspective of modern society's universal values. In a modern civilized society, spies also have human rights.

In 2019, Taiwan's Control Yuan officially determined that there were significant flaws in the judicial procedures of the Wu Shi case back then. To say "significant flaws" is being polite; the verdict of the Wu Shi case was essentially Chiang Kai-shek's word, wasn't it? Today, Forbidden Books Notes will interpret the history of the Wu Shi case from the perspective of a third-party external force, beyond the KMT and CCP. Politics has no neutrality, and history has no bystanders. Don't forget to like this episode and add it to your YouTube personal center.

Wu Shi retreated to Taiwan with the Kuomintang in 1949, eventually rising to the rank of Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Ministry of National Defense. He was also one of the highest-ranking spies the CCP had planted in the upper echelons of the Nanjing government as early as 1947. The CCP's codename for him was "Special Envoy No. 1," signifying him as one of the CCP's most crucial intelligence assets. The female agent who liaised with him, Zhu Feng, was also extraordinary, a beautiful CCP spy. Just hearing her name, you know she was a formidable figure. The CCP at that time recruited a group of left-leaning intellectual young women, who, with a little training, could become socialites like Zhu Feng. Conversely, it would have been difficult for female spies trained by the Kuomintang to go to Yan'an and cook a loving braised pork for Mao Zedong.

After Wu Shi arrived in Taiwan, he handed over high-level secrets, such as Taiwan's defense deployments and operational plans, to the female agent Zhu Feng. Zhu Feng then transmitted the intelligence to the CCP via Hong Kong. At the end of 1949, the father of Wang Shijian, now a relaxed legislator, inadvertently leaked an underground CCP newspaper in Taiwan, "Guangming Daily," while pursuing a schoolgirl. Following the clues from "Guangming Daily," Mao Renfeng, Director of the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, apprehended Cai Xiaoqian, a CCP spy in Taiwan. This trail ultimately led to Wu Shi and Zhu Feng.

In early 1950, Wu Shi was arrested in Taiwan. Zhu Feng had by then managed to escape back to Zhoushan, Zhejiang. At that time, Zhoushan, Zhejiang, was still under Kuomintang control, and Zhu Feng was captured by the Kuomintang from Zhoushan and brought back to Taiwan. In fact, just a few months later, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to withdraw Tang Enbo's troops from Zhoushan back to Taiwan. From then on, the KMT military lost all its strongholds on the mainland.

In June 1950, when the KMT forces had just withdrawn from Zhoushan, the Korean War had not yet broken out, and it seemed that the isolated island of Taiwan would soon be captured by the Communist army. Chiang Ching-kuo's statement at the time was to "first survive the next 100 days." This shows that Taiwan's situation in 1950 was already extremely critical. At this point, a heavy sentence in the Wu Shi case became Chiang Kai-shek's best means to establish internal authority.

On the morning of June 10, 1950, Wu Shi, Zhu Feng, and two others were executed by firing squad at the Machangding Execution Ground in Taipei. Before his execution, Wu Shi, nearly 56 years old, penned a farewell poem, lamenting: "My life was dedicated solely to loyalty and goodness, yet such an end is too tragic." This means he had strived his entire life for loyalty and good deeds, only to meet a disgraced end.

Just two weeks after Wu Shi's execution, Kim Il Sung risked launching the Korean War, which completely reversed the geopolitical situation in Asia. After the outbreak of the Korean War, the U.S. Seventh Fleet entered the Taiwan Strait, and the U.S. resumed military aid to Taiwan. The Chiang Kai-shek regime, caught in a storm, grasped a lifeline.

The United States had supported the Chiang Kai-shek regime since the War of Resistance Against Japan, but by the end of the Chinese Civil War, the Truman administration had grown weary of the corruption and factional infighting within the Kuomintang. For viewers interested in the history of KMT infighting, Forbidden Books Notes has a three-part series on KMT factional struggles; you can subscribe to this channel and find it yourself.

Before the Korean War, the United States was eager to disengage from Asia. After the Korean War, although the U.S. objectively needed Taiwan to once again serve as a fulcrum for anti-communism in Asia, Chiang Kai-shek also needed to prove to the U.S. that he had the determination and ability to purge Communist infiltration in Taiwan. At this point, the White Terror entered its second phase, shifting from suppressing "Benshengren" rebellions internally to demonstrating Taiwan's anti-communist value.

To be honest, Americans didn't care at all about the conflict between Benshengren and Waishengren; it's hard to say how many American politicians even knew the distinction between them. What the U.S. cared about was whether Taiwan could serve as a stable fulcrum in its global anti-communist bloc, rather than collapsing from within after a large investment of taxpayer dollars. Therefore, at this time, Americans hoped that Taiwan's anti-communist efforts could be institutionalized and long-term.

The first half of the White Terror during the 228 Incident period was characterized by chaos and a lack of legal order, with arrests made without warrants and executions carried out without trials. In contrast, the state violence in the second half evolved into an institutionalized system, with a full set of legal procedures on the surface, including arrest, interrogation, indictment, and judgment. Although seemingly legal, it was essentially tyranny.

The legal system of the second half of the White Terror had three legal pillars: the 1949 "Martial Law Decree" and the "Statute for the Punishment of Rebellion," and the 1950 "Regulations for the Purging of Spies during the Period of Communist Rebellion." These laws systematically restricted freedoms of assembly, association, and speech, defining national security suspects as traitors. At the same time, the government encouraged mutual reporting among citizens. Article 14 of the "Regulations for the Purging of Spies during the Period of Communist Rebellion" stipulated that handling officers could receive 35% of the confiscated property in spy cases. This opened the door for wrongful convictions.

Trials before 1956 adopted a "joint trial system," which was a closed-door secret court with no appeal process; if you were declared guilty, you were guilty. After 1956, the Ministry of National Defense remained the highest military judicial authority. As the leader of the armed forces, Chiang Kai-shek held the supreme military judicial review power. Over 80% of cases reviewed by Chiang Kai-shek resulted in harsher sentences, with 30% being changed to death sentences.

Among all legal tools, the most terrifying was Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the "Statute for the Punishment of Rebellion," abbreviated as "Article 2-1." The core content of Article 2-1 stipulated that anyone who violated Article 100 of the Criminal Code would be sentenced to death. What is Article 100? It refers to "intending to undermine the national polity" or "altering the national constitution." What constitutes "intent" could be interpreted very flexibly.

The terror of "Article 2-1" lay in this ultimate power of interpretation. For example, writing articles, expressing dissenting political views, reading banned books, participating in reading clubs, or even subscribing to prohibited YouTube channels like Forbidden Books Notes, could all be considered intentions to rebel, punishable by death. Article 2-1 was essentially a baseless thought crime, shifting the focus of state suppression from actual espionage or rebellious acts to prosecuting political dissidents. This allowed the Kuomintang regime to use anti-communist pretexts to eliminate all potential dissidents, left-wing sympathizers, or local Taiwanese independence supporters, regardless of whether they truly posed a military threat, prosecuting them all. This reign of terror continued until the lifting of martial law in 1987.

Mainland Chinese viewers might not understand why a few "Mainland Chinese spousal internet celebrities" who recently capitalized on the "unification by force" trend could spark such a huge debate in Taiwanese society. In reality, the debate centers on whether the remarks made by these individuals on TikTok genuinely endangered Taiwan's national security or social stability. The Democratic Progressive Party government believes they did, asserting that if they say you did, you did, and thus the DPP handled the matter based on national security concerns. This reminded some Taiwanese citizens of "Article 2-1" from the martial law era.

Finally, let's look at the "Red Scare" in the United States at the time, namely McCarthyism, an anti-communist political witch hunt that occurred simultaneously with the Wu Shi case in the U.S. Unlike Taiwan's White Terror, which focused on purging internal Communist spies, a core target of McCarthyism was attacking foreign policy experts within the Truman administration, especially technocrats responsible for Far Eastern affairs.

The CCP's victory in the civil war in 1949 is known in American history as "the loss of China." This failure was attributed by Senator Joseph McCarthy to the presence of numerous communist sympathizers within the U.S. Department of State. McCarthy accused these individuals of deliberately undermining the U.S. government. Although Truman publicly refuted McCarthy, calling him a "fear-mongering demagogue," the U.S. had indeed suffered successive failures in Asia, and public opinion at the time was dominated by fear, leaving the government at a complete disadvantage in terms of media presence.

During the same period, Chiang Kai-shek was busy apprehending Communist spies, while McCarthy spread Red Scare conspiracy theories in the United States. The primary victims of McCarthyism's purges were a group of experienced diplomats in the U.S. Department of State who truly understood China, known as "China Hands." For example, John Fairbank, a famous American sinologist and Harvard University professor, was one of the targets of McCarthyism's persecution.

Under the paranoid logic of McCarthyism, what crimes did these China Hands commit? Simply put, there were two. First, as part of their diplomatic duties, they had contact with the CCP regime in Yan'an during World War II on behalf of the U.S. government. Second, they used their expertise to accurately predict the military and political collapse of the Kuomintang regime during the Chinese Civil War. Under McCarthyism's paranoid logic, accurately predicting the CCP's victory was twisted into "hoping for the CCP's victory." These scientific, rational, and pragmatic China Hands were therefore suspected of disloyalty to the United States and branded as Communist sympathizers.

After the McCarthyist purges, by 1950, most of the 22 core China Hands in the U.S. Department of State had been fired or reassigned, with only two remaining to handle Chinese affairs. "Time Magazine" at the time pointed out that this purge created a huge knowledge vacuum in the U.S. Asian policy-making circles. Whoever could fill this vacuum would gain policy discourse power.

While the China Hands were being purged, another force in Washington, "The China Lobby," was growing. The China Lobby was an informal network composed of Kuomintang government representatives and American politicians sympathetic to Taiwan. The group's initial goal was to secure more U.S. military and economic aid for the Kuomintang during World War II and the Chinese Civil War. By the Cold War, their core narrative shifted to defining the Chinese Civil War as part of the U.S.'s global struggle against international communism, rather than an Asian civil war occurring in the distant East.

When the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950, the Truman administration urgently needed an East Asia policy. At this point, the professional China Hands bureaucrats within Washington had been swept out by McCarthy, leaving only the voice of The China Lobby. They propelled the ruthless but efficient Chiang Kai-shek regime onto the stage of anti-communism in Asia. Chiang Kai-shek, in turn, used the White Terror to prove his anti-communist value.

Through the high-profile handling of the Wu Shi case, Chiang Kai-shek reshaped the image of the Kuomintang regime, transforming it from a loose party easily infiltrated by the Communist Party into a ruthless but efficient Leninist party. The Wu Shi case indeed proved to the Taiwanese public that Communist spies and sympathizers truly existed, which allowed the White Terror to flourish and persist in Taiwanese society for 40 years. Wu Shi's life was exchanged for 40 years of airtight social control in Taiwan.

Forbidden Books Notes believes that there are not many Communist spies in Taiwan now; most are just small fry, because the current People's Liberation Army is different from the PLA at Guningtou back then. The military disparity across the Taiwan Strait is now huge, and the CCP's biggest enemy is no longer Taiwan, but the United States. Intelligence infiltration against the U.S. is now the CCP's most important work.

Who is the biggest "Communist spy" caught in Taiwan in the past 20 years? Like Wu Shi, he was also a lieutenant general. This retired lieutenant general, named Gao Anguo, was suspected of receiving funds from China to establish an armed organization in Taiwan called the "Anti-Independence and Pro-Unification Alliance," aiming to act as an inside agent for the PLA during a landing. So, how much funding did the Anti-Independence and Pro-Unification Alliance receive in this entire incident? A total of 6 people shared a budget of 1 million RMB, equivalent to 4.35 million NTD or 140,000 USD. With such a small amount of money, it would be difficult even to maintain a gangster organization. What actual armed capability does this Anti-Independence and Pro-Unification Alliance have? It seems more like a scam, 4 million NTD would be enough for a scam project, with the CCP as the target of the deception.

Next week, Forbidden Books Notes' history program will be suspended once, as I plan to make an AI parody video of Shen Boyang. Join this channel's membership now and receive a lazy pack of reviews for over 100 hand-picked good books. See you next Saturday!