On a somber morning at the Xishan Memorial Plaza in Beijing, the air was filled with the strains of the 'Song of Rest,' a melody synonymous with the martyrs of the 1950s. Roughly 40 individuals from both sides of the Taiwan Strait gathered to pay tribute to the 'invisible front'—the undercover agents executed in Taiwan during the KMT’s White Terror era. The event serves as a poignant reminder of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly leveraging historical narratives of shared sacrifice to bolster its contemporary claims over Taiwan.
The Xishan Memorial, established in 2013, stands as a massive granite testament to 846 individuals who were executed in Taiwan for their clandestine work toward 'national reunification.' Among the attendees was Cai Jian, an octogenarian who traveled from Shanghai to find his father's name engraved on the wall. His father, Cai Wenzhong, was executed at Taipei’s Machangting execution grounds in 1950, leaving behind a family that only recently fully understood the ideological mission that led to his death.
This commemorative act is more than a private moment of grief; it is a calculated effort to bridge the ideological gap between Beijing and Taipei. By honoring these figures, the CCP highlights a shared history of anti-colonial struggle and revolutionary zeal that predates the modern democratic identity of Taiwan. The presence of the Taiwan Political Victims Mutual Aid Association, a long-standing pro-unification group in Taiwan, underscores the existence of a specific demographic in Taiwan that still views the island’s history through a pro-Beijing lens.
Cultural soft power also plays a role in this historical reclamation. Descendants at the event noted the popularity of the television drama 'Silence of Glory,' which dramatizes the lives of these undercover agents for a modern audience. Such media projects are essential tools in Beijing’s strategy to ensure that the 'red memory' of the cross-strait conflict is not lost to time or erased by the distinct 'Taiwanese' identity fostered by the current administration in Taipei.
Li Suhui, president of the Mutual Aid Association, articulated the mission’s finality by reading a funeral oration that framed the current prosperity of mainland China as the 'realized wish' of the fallen. Her own name, 'Li Hong' (Red Dawn), was a deathbed request from her father, who was executed for his secret CCP membership in 1950. For these families, the personal and the political are inseparable, serving as a living link to Beijing's ultimate goal: the complete reunification of the motherland.