Conflict in 70. Confrontation between China and Taiwan

The People’s Republic of China considers Taiwan a breakaway province that should eventually return to China.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan shocked the world over China’s threats. Relations between China and Taiwan are an ongoing simmering conflict that began more than 70 years ago.

The People’s Republic of China considers Taiwan a breakaway province that should eventually return to China.

Consequences of World War II

In 1895, after the first Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government had to cede Taiwan to Japan. As a result of World War II, Japan relinquished control of territory taken from China. The Republic of China – one of the winners of the war – began to rule Taiwan with the consent of its allies, the United States and Great Britain.

But then civil war broke out in China between the national government of the Kuomintang Party, led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the troops of the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong. The Kuomintang was defeated.

In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters – numbering about one and a half million people in total – fled to Taiwan. He established a government in exile there, named the territory under his control the Republic of China, and ruled it for the next 25 years.

The mainland Chinese, who fled with Chiang Kai-shek, dominated Taiwan’s politics for many years, although they made up only 14% of the population.

After Chan, his son Jiang Jingguo, also known as Nikolai Vladimirovich Elizarov, came to power in Taiwan. In his youth he was sent to study in Moscow, he lived with Lenin’s sister, participated in collectivization and even worked for some time in a machine shop at the Uralmash plant, and in 1937 he was arrested.

In the same 1937, Jiang Jingguo returned to his homeland with his Soviet wife (in Taiwan he received the name Jiang Fanliang).

Jiang Jingguo was known for his openness and democratic behavior. As Minister of the Interior in his father’s government in Taiwan, he put down several attempted communist insurgencies.

After his father’s death, he first led the Kuomintang, and then in 1978 became president of Taiwan and was elected to two consecutive terms until his death in 1988. Under him, Taiwan underwent democratic reforms, although the government remained generally authoritarian.

Jiang Jingguo was succeeded by his former vice president, Li Tenghui. He has been called the “father of Taiwan’s democracy”. He carried out constitutional reform, and in 2000, for the first time, a president who was not a member of the Kuomintang Party, Chen Shui-bian, was elected in the country.

Who is for Taiwan?

Taiwan has its own constitution, democratically elected leaders, and an army of about 300,000.

Chiang Kai-shek, who once created a government-in-exile there, said it represented all of China, and would retake the country. Taiwan even sat in China’s place on the UN Security Council, because many Western countries consider it to be the real government of China.

However, in the 1970s, some members of the Security Council began to say that Taiwan could no longer represent the hundreds of millions of people living in mainland China.

In 1971, the UN returned the seat to Beijing, and Taiwan was expelled. In 1978, China began to open up its economy. The United States, recognizing the opportunities for trade and the need to develop relationships, officially established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979.

Since then, the number of countries that officially recognize Taiwan has dwindled to about 15 today.

Today, despite having all the characteristics of an independent state and a distinct political system from China, Taiwan’s legal status remains unclear.

One country, two systems

In the 1980s, Sino-Taiwanese relations began to improve: Taiwan first relaxed rules for visiting and investing in China, and in 1991 it was announced that the war with the People’s Republic of China was over.

China has proposed a so-called “one country, two systems” option in which Beijing guarantees Taiwan’s autonomy will remain if it agrees to reunification. Under the same promises, Beijing took back Hong Kong in 1997 – and until recently kept its word, but then forced its own policies on democratic Hong Kong. Taiwan rejected the offer.

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, who came to power in 2000, has become a headache for China as he and his Democratic Progressive Party openly advocate a separate state.

In 2004, Chen was re-elected, and a year later, China passed the so-called anti-secession law, which allows China to use “non-peaceful means” against Taiwan if it tries to secede.

If Beijing and Taipei disagree on a fundamental political issue, economically their relationship has broadened and strengthened in recent decades. From 1991 to the end of May 2021, Taiwan’s investment in China reached $193.5 billion, according to Taiwan’s official data.

Some people in Taiwan worry that their economy is now dependent on China. Others believe that closer economic ties reduce the likelihood of a PRC attack.

In May of this year, President Biden was asked if the United States was ready to defend Taiwan, and he answered in the affirmative. The White House immediately clarified that the US position on Taiwan had not changed and reaffirmed its commitment to the “One China” policy. Almost the same as Biden’s previous statements about military support for Taiwan.

Beijing has denounced any perceived Washington support for Taipei and, in response to Biden’s claims, has stepped up military aircraft incursions into Taiwan’s air defense zone.