Many Yiguandao followers escaped to Taiwan fleeing Mao’s persecution. But the Kuomintang regime persecuted them, too.
March 13, 2025
Confronted with bloody persecution in Mainland China, tens of thousands of Yiguandao followers escaped to Taiwan. They also gained new converts there. They had not expected they would be persecuted in Taiwan too, but this is what happened, although the repression was somewhat less severe than in Mao’s Red China. However, Kuomintang Nationalism also had his policy against the xie jiao, and continued it in Taiwan.
Certainly the CCP’s struggle against the xie jiao in Mainland China cannot be compared quantitatively to the parallel struggle by the Kuomintang in Taiwan, if we consider the number of those arrested and executed. However both Sun Yat-Sen (1866–1925) and Chiang Kai-Shek (1887–1975) shared with Mao the idea that xie jiao were harmful to the progress of China and should be eradicated.
Chinese nationalism emerged as a progressive approach to modernization, and xie jiao were considered “superstitious organizations” (mixin jiguan) that opposed modernity and progress. Despite this, scholars like David Ownby and David Palmer have observed that nationalist governments in Mainland China often had other priorities and failed to establish an effective anti-xie-jiao mechanism like the one Mao developed from the 1950s onward.
However, their ideologues continued advocating for crackdowns on xie jiao, which sometimes occurred. For example, in 1927, one of China’s largest new religious movements, Tongshanshe, was targeted in such a crackdown. Additionally, spirit-writing religions, which obtained sacred texts from spirits through automatic writing forms, such as Daoyuan and Wushanshe, faced persecution as well.
After the Communist victory in the Civil War, the Kuomintang moved to Taiwan and established the Republic of China. They continued actions against redemptive societies and new religions. During Martial Law (1949–1987), groups with Japanese headquarters, like Tenrikyo and Soka Gakkai, were also affected because of past conflicts with Japan. Additionally, some Christian organizations labeled as “cults” by the pro-Kuomintang Christian establishment were also targeted.
Mimicking policies in Mainland China, the Kuomintang in Taiwan favored the foundation and activities of the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC), which was supposed to include all Buddhist groups in the island, ans control and promote a pro-government attitudes among them. However, independent Buddhist masters and new movements,some promoting democracy and social justice, weakened BAROC’s authority, indirectly critiquing the government.
BAROC was disturbed by the conversion of Buddhists to Yiguandao. It both supported government’s campaigns against Yiguandao and incited the regime to repress it more severely. This led to a total ban of all different (and rival) Yiguandao branches by Taiwan’s Kuomintang government in 1951. When in 1981, the government started considering lifting the ban on Yiguandao, BAROC organized a lobby action to keep it banned. They also insisted that Yiguandao was part of the elusive “White Lotus,” a century-old accusations against new religions in China.
Because Yiguandao members only eat vegetarian foods and eggs, in Taiwan it was nicknamed “the sect of duck eggs” (Yadan Jiao). This disparaging nickname soon became popular together with the rumors that the followers of “the duck egg sect” held immoral and black magic rituals. Additionally, state-operated newspapers repeated and amplified these accusations. For instance, “New Life News” (Xinsheng Bao, February 2, 1963) claimed that a leader of Yiguandao engaged in adultery with female followers. The “Minzu Evening Paper” (Minzu Wanbao, March 8, 1963) reported that Yiguandao, known as the “duck egg sect,” “held naked congregations and raped female believers” and perhaps conspired with the CCP and the Soviet Union, a very dangerous accusation at that time in Taiwan.
Yiguandao leaders reacted in a way that was unprecedented in Martial Law Taiwan. Since some of them were well-connected and rich businesspersons, they bought a space in the government-controlled “New Life News” and published a response as a paid advertisement, published on March 13, 1963. Their text went through the motion of accepting the existence of a “duck egg sect,” only to claim that this mysterious cult might have been responsible of superstition, subversion, and immorality but was a different group from Yiguandao.
They wrote that. “In fact, Yiguandao is not only the most progressive religion of our country, but also an important force in opposition to the CCP and the USSR. Our Dao also criticizes the so-called ‘the duck eggs sect’ and its behaviors which are revealed by the newspaper. All of the believers of our Dao obey the law, fulfill their social responsibility and spontaneously change their minds to correct the social atmosphere and benefit the country. However, we are stigmatized by the above rumors published in newspapers. Though it is unnecessary for us to argue against these reports, considering that the state is during the important period of opposing the CCP and the USSR and that, if we keep silence, such wicked slanders would violate the social morality and weaken the forces against the CCP, we purposely publish this announcement to clarify some facts.”
Basically, the stratagem did not work. For the Kuomintang authorities, “the duck eggs sect” was just another name for Yiguandao. They were not regarded as separate organizations; they were considered one and the same. That a banned movement, Yiguandao, had managed to publish an advertisement in a government-operated newspaper was regarded as a provocation. Repression intensified, and the main leaders of Yiguandao were arrested after having been invited to “drink a tea at the police station.”
When I interviewed veteran Yiguandao practitioners in Taiwan in 2019, they insisted that some of those invited “for tea” never reappeared and were likely killed, although scholars did not find evidence of executions or extra-judicial killings, while admitting some leaders remained in jail for many years and some might have been tortured. Between 1959 and 1982, Taiwanese media reported 118 raids where police disrupted Yiguandao’s illegal gatherings and arrested those in attendance. As Song Guangyu notes, there might have been more raids that went unreported in the media.
On the other hand, as it often happens with persecuted religions, Yiguandao showed an exceptional resilience during the Martial Law period. The number of members actually grew, reaching more than 440,000 by 1989, also because an effective clandestine organization was developed. Even the competition between different branches of the movement favored resilience and growth.
The clandestine survival of Yiguandao, however, is surrounded by some ambiguity. Taiwanese voted for local elections since the 1960s. Some report that, while officially advocating for repression, some Kuomintang politicians were aware that Yiguandao members numbered in the hundreds of thousands and secretly negotiated with their leaders to gain their votes. Not only did this prepare the legalization of Yiguandao in 1987 but created a friendly relation between some branches of the religion and the party that, despite past persecutions, lasts to this very day.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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