Abstract：
From the early days of the Dutch presence in Asia, gold was regarded as an important commodity for intra-Asian trade. Jan Pieterszoon Coen, Governor-General of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Asia (1619-1623, 1627-1629) proposed using sandalwood, pepper, and Spanish reals (silver coins) to obtain Chinese goods and gold, and then exchanging gold and pepper for Indian textiles. The VOC’s Tayouan Trading Post was consequently entrusted with the crucial task of acquiring substantial quantities of Chinese gold to support the Company’s trade in Indian textiles and other commodities, while also reducing its dependence on funds remitted from the Dutch Republic.
However, the overseas export of Chinese gold was constrained by a combination of political, economic, and sociocultural factors, making it difficult for the Tayouan Trading Post to control its supply. In response to these shifting circumstances, the Company sought to flexibly deploy silver, including Japanese silver and European silver coins, as well as commodities such as pepper, in the hope of acquiring as much Chinese gold as possible with limited funds and at relatively low cost.
Although silver, as a means of procuring Chinese commodities, significantly facilitated the acquisition of silk goods, its effects on the acquisition of gold was considerably more complex. Even when large quantities of silver flowed into the market, the Company’s acquisition of gold did not necessarily increase correspondingly. Conversely, when large quantities of gold flowed into Tayouan, the Company often shifted toward using commodities such as pepper as its principal means of exchange. These patterns involved not only fluctuations in the quantities and exchange rates of gold and silver, but also the Company’s broader strategies for global capital deployment and commodity circulation, as well as its commercial rivalry and negotiation with Chinese merchants across regional and maritime boundaries.

Keywords：Gold, Silver, Pepper, Tayouan Trading Post, Batavia, Dutch East India Company (VOC)

Abstract：
Drawing on the archival holdings of the Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense (IBMND), declassified Republic of China-United States records, and the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, this article reconstructs IBMND-led amphibious special operations for the “counteroffensive against the mainland” between 1962 and 1969. It argues that the counteroffensive was not merely a political slogan, but also involved a series of “preliminary operations” carried out by intelligence agencies in conjunction with the Project National Glory or Project Guoguang. In the light of Chiang Kai-shek’s strategic principles of “30 percent military operations and 70 percent political maneuvering” and the “indirect approach,” the article examines how Chiang Ching-kuo integrated the mainland operation apparatus including the National Security Bureau and the IBMND, producing an operational repertoire centered on amphibious infiltration and network development, amphibious infiltration raids, and maritime attacks.
The article then examines a series of amphibious special operations, focusing on their operational concepts and outcomes in response to shifting battlefield conditions. Declassified records reveal that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency did participate in training and equipping these operations and was involved in several specific ones. Nevertheless, U.S. policy support remained limited to intelligence operations and did not extend to support for a regular military landing. The article also compares the Chinese Communist Party’s victory narrative of having “annihilated U.S.–Chiang armed agents” with Taiwan’s psychological-warfare propaganda, which used reports of operational successes and the death of agents to sustain support for the preliminary operations. It argues that these amphibious special operations not only reinforced internal repression and national mobilization within the PRC, but also helped sustain the Kuomintang government’s counteroffensive discourse within Taiwan.
Ultimately, these operations neither succeeded in provoking anti-communist resistance on the mainland nor created conditions conducive to a conventional landing. Instead, they exposed the widening military asymmetry across the Taiwan Strait and the operational limitations of the ROC armed forces. They also revealed the growing gap between political claims, psychological warfare, and practical military strategy that characterized the counteroffensive against the mainland. The rise and eventual decline of these operations not only shaped Taiwan’s postwar strategic transformation but also illuminated the complex Cold War power relations and the evolving security order in East Asia.

Keywords：Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo, Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Guoguang Plan, Mainland Operations, Special Operations

Abstract：
This article examines Lee Teng-hui’s “Program for Enhancing the Central Representative Institutions” (hereafter “the Enhancement Program”) during the early years of his presidency, focusing on how he sought to reform Taiwan’s so-called “eternal parliament” through this initiative. The term “Central Representative Institutions” refers collectively to the National Assembly, Legislative Yuan, and Control Yuan. Originally a legal term introduced in the 1970s revisions to the Temporary Provisions to authorize supplementary elections for central representatives, “enhancement” was also frequently employed as political rhetoric by Chiang Ching-kuo. Although Chiang’s position on parliamentary reform was ambiguous in his later years, he left a document entitled Preliminary Proposals for Parliamentary Reform, which subsequently became an important basis for Lee Teng-hui’s Enhancement Program. Drawing on speech records and research plans preserved in the Lee Teng-hui Foundation archives, this article argues that Lee deliberately adopted the Enhancement Program as a gradual strategy of reducing the proportion of senior representatives.
This article analyzes the Enhancement Program through the framework of “surface and substance.” At the level of public discourse, Lee presented himself as inheriting Chiang Ching-kuo’s reform agenda and continued to advocate the Enhancement Program in those terms. In practice, however, he sought to dilute the proportion of senior representatives by implementing the Act Governing the Voluntary Retirement of First-Term Senior Representatives and by increasing the number of supplementary representatives. This reveals a seemingly contradictory yet mutually dependent relationship between inheritance and reform, and between enhancement and dilution.
In June 1990, an interpretation by the Council of Grand Justices established that senior representatives would have to leave office by a specified deadline. The March student movement of that year and the subsequent National Affairs Conference generated a wide variety of proposals concerning parliamentary reform and re-election. The Enhancement Program demonstrates, however, that Lee Teng-hui had already begun considering possible paths toward democratic reform before 1990, rather than focusing solely on political power struggles. Examining the program therefore provides a basis for reassessing Lee’s achievements during the early years of his presidency. At the same time, it highlights Lee’s political strategy during a period of unstable authority: presenting himself as the successor to Chiang Ching-kuo while advancing substantive parliamentary reform.

Keywords：Lee Teng-hui Foundation Archives, Chiang Ching-kuo, Eternal Parliament, Constitutional Legitimacy, Full Parliamentary Re-election

Abstract：
This article examines the changing symbolic meanings of two fish species, grey mullet and milkfish, in the process of “touristification” that has transformed fishing villages in Taiwan over the past three decades. It also compares these two species with tilapia, another important aquaculture fish, and briefly considers the case of Pacific bluefin tuna. Both grey mullet and milkfish have played long-standing and significant roles in Taiwan’s history and culture and have acquired a strong sense of “locality.” At the material level, both species also possess distinctive “affordances.” With the development of fishing village tourism, milkfish, however, has attracted particular attention from festival organizers and the public. Its social, cultural, and political meanings have consequently been continually expanded through public discourse. Symbolically, milkfish has thus moved beyond representing individual townships, counties and cities, or regions to representing Taiwan as a whole, transforming its deeply rooted locality into a strong sense of nationhood. Tilapia, by contrast, has not generated comparable cultural resonance. Although its history of introduction to Taiwan is relatively short, it has become deeply embedded in everyday life and is now nearly as familiar to ordinary people as milkfish. Nevertheless, its hybrid breeding history, persistent negative perceptions, weak presence in everyday cultural narratives, and lack of the promotional support of local festivals to construct its locality have together made it difficult for tilapia to develop positive “Taiwaneseness” or strong national significance. Pacific bluefin tuna, although widely recognized through the “Pingtung Bluefin Tuna Cultural Festival,” possesses even less historical and cultural depth to embody broader national meanings. Overall, this study demonstrates how touristification of fishing villages and festival practices can transform culturally embedded local fish species into symbols that extend from the local and regional levels to the national level, thereby contributing to the construction of Taiwanese identity.

Keywords：Milkfish, Grey Mullet, Tilapia, Pacific Bluefin Tuna, Touristification of Fishing Villages, Locality, Nationhood, Taiwanese Identity

Abstract：
Since 2018, Taiwan’s intelligence agencies have transferred a large volume of surveillance-related archives to the National Archives Administration. These materials have become an important source for research on Taiwan’s postwar political development. Yet historians had already offered insightful interpretations of the processes and trajectories of postwar political development before these archives became available for public research. What, then, is the research potential of these newly accessible materials, and what additional contributions can they make to our understanding of Taiwan’s postwar political history?
This article argues that existing studies of Taiwan’s postwar political history have tended to focus on elite decision-making, localization of the party-state system, pressure from the United States, and challenges from Taiwanese society, while paying relatively little attention to intelligence agencies themselves and to how their activities shaped political development. Drawing on surveillance archives made accessible since 2018, this study identifies two interrelated functions of the intelligence apparatus: “surveillance” and “control.” Surveillance involved gathering information on the activities and networks of political dissidents, while control involved efforts to influence dissidents in order to weaken or prevent their words and actions from challenging authoritarian rule. Through a continuing cycle of surveillance and control, intelligence agencies helped sustain the operation of authoritarian rule.
Beyond reinforcing or corroborating existing interpretations, these archival materials make it possible to reexamine the institutional formation, development, and gradual loosening of authoritarian rule from the perspective of intelligence agencies. In doing so, they open up a new analytical approach to understanding how authoritarian rule was established, maintained, and gradually transformed in postwar Taiwan.

Keywords：Surveillance Archives, Intelligence Agencies, Political Development, Authoritarian Rule, Kuomintang