Elsewhere, including its homeland the United States, Scientology has been facing setbacks. Some of Scientology’s highest-ranking members have left the church in recent years and denounced its leaders for alleged abuses. Defectors have also leaked documents, exposing the church’s secrets to unwanted scrutiny. Celebrity members have left its ranks, including the King of Queens actress Leah Remini and the Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis.

And though the church claims millions of members, census figures say its numbers in the U.S. may have fallen to 25,000 or lower in 2008 from a peak of 55,000 in 2001. High-ranking defectors say that missions around the world have closed or consolidated and showcase properties stand empty.

By contrast, Scientology’s biggest church in Taiwan—the 108,000 square-foot ex-hotel in Kaohsiung—is bustling. When I visited one evening last fall, I saw dozens of people coming and going in the course of a few hours. Taiwanese believers are also fundraising to build the island’s second lavish megachurch in Taipei.

Asked about this growth, the Church of Scientology said: “It is true that the Church of Scientology is expanding in Taiwan, just as we are expanding everywhere.”

And Scientology’s reach in Taiwan extends beyond the churches themselves. According to Scientology’s disaster-relief and community-service arm, the group sent Taiwanese volunteers last year to participate in earthquake-recovery efforts in Nepal, where members performed “contact assists,” a form of touch-healing Scientologists believe relieves pain by hand. (Last summer, Scientologists trained dozens of Kaohsiung police officers in these “assist” techniques.) A Scientology affiliate runs anti-drug programs in elementary schools across the country, and claims to have already educated some 300,000 young Taiwanese.

According to documents described as leaks from Scientology's main database of internal statistics and published by Mike Rinder, a high-ranking defector, Taiwanese Scientology missions were three of the top 10 cumulative fundraisers for the church in 2014. In June 2015, according to data published on the Scientology-watching blog Sec-Check, the Taipei mission tied for first among Scientology churches around the world for weekly “stats” reflecting sales of books, hours of counseling, and new recruits. (Asked about these materials, a Scientology spokesperson described them as “stolen documents.” The church said Rinder was “dismissed from his position and expelled because of his dishonesty.”)

Scientology has found a lifeline in Taiwan, which the church describes as a gateway to China, a target it calls “the abiding dream of all Scientologists.”

How did this happen?

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Sitting at a café across the street from a downtown Taipei temple last fall, Verjanso Yang shook his head ruefully as he remembered the near decade he spent in the church. Once one of Taiwan’s highest-ranking Scientologists, he now wants nothing to do with the group.