Why are China and Taiwan fighting? The history and keys that explain seven decades of tension

The Chinese Army began military maneuvers around Taiwan this Thursday, a movement that it has already resorted to four times since 2022 to put pressure on the self-governed territory in the most tense moments and that this time respond to the inauguration of the new president of the island, William Lai (Lai Ching-te).

The exercises have the stated goal of acting “as a strong punishment for separatist acts of the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces” and begin three days after Lai, considered a “troublemaker” by Beijing, said during his inauguration that the island will not give up its sovereignty.

Relations between China and Taiwan, difficult since their de facto separation in 1949, are a source of recurring tensions between Washington and Beijing, which have increased in the last two years, particularly with the visit of the then president of the House of Representatives of United States, Nancy Pelosi, to Taipei.

that to which they have occurred numerous crises and skirmishes in the Taiwan Strait since the end of the Chinese civil war, it was in 2022 when Beijing began to resort to these large-scale maneuvers around the island to exert pressure at specific times.

Here, a review of the main stages of relations between the autonomous island and China.

On October 1, 1949, communist leader Mao Tse Tung proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, after defeating the nationalists in the four-year civil war that broke out after World War II.

The nationalist troops of the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), retreated to Taiwan and on December 7 formed a government, which they considered as the continuation of the Republic of China founded after the fall of the Empire in 1911.

The nationalists They prohibited any relationship with Mainland China.

In December of that year, the first of a series of attempts by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to seize the islets of Quemoy and Matsu broke out.

Taiwan became an ally of the United States in 1950.then at war against China in Korea.

On October 5, 1971, China replaced Taiwan in the UN.

In 1979, the United States breaks diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognizes Beijing, but the US Congress maintains the supply of weapons to Taiwan for self-defense.

The United States and almost the entire international community adopt the “one China” policy, which excludes diplomatic relations with the island of nationalist government.

Washington, however, remains the Taiwan’s main ally and its first supplier of military material.

In 1987, Taiwan authorized trips to mainland China for family reunions, thus opening the way to commercial exchanges.

In 1991, Taipei repealed the provisions that established a state of war with China.

But in 1995, China suspend negotiations of normalization to protest against a trip by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to the United States.

In 1996, China launched missiles near the Taiwanese coast shortly before the first presidential election by universal suffrage, on March 23 in Taiwan.

On March 14, 2005, China adopts an anti-secession law that provides for “non-peaceful” means if Taiwan declares independence.

In 2008, China and Taiwan they resume the dialogue suspended in 1995.

In 2010, they signed a framework agreement for economic cooperation and four years later they established an intergovernmental dialogue.

On November 7, 2015, the Chinese and Taiwanese presidents meet in Singapore, something unprecedented since the separation in 1949.

In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen, emerging from a pro-independence party, becomes president of Taiwan.

In 2017, then-US President Donald Trump authorized a major arms sale from his country to Taiwan. The following year, the United States adopts a law that strengthens its relations with the eastern island.

In 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that he will not renounce force to recover Taiwan and warned Washington of the risk of “playing with fire” following a new arms sale to the island.

In January 2020, Taiwan’s re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen reaffirmed that the territory is “one country.”

In October of that year, Xi Jinping asked the military “prepare for war.”

On April 12, 2021, Chinese military aircraft penetrate Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (Adiz). From January to early October, more than 600 Chinese aircraft were detected in that area.

On October 22, US President Joe Biden stated that his country was willing to defend Taiwan militarily in case of Chinese attack.

A few days later, on the 27th, China rejected a US proposal to grant Taiwan “significant participation” in the UN.

Chinese forces announced the first maneuvers of this type in response to the visit of then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, which angered Beijing and raised tensions in the Strait to unprecedented levels. in decades.

China thus counterattacked the risky trip of the American official, although it did not undertake an invasion in response to what it described as a “provocation”, as the most pessimistic analysts feared.

The exercises included practice launch of long-range missiles and the closure of maritime and air space in numerous areas adjacent to the island, and their purpose, according to Chinese military experts, was to “create a kind of noose” that could be “tightened” to “contain the Taiwanese separatist forces.”

For decades, before 2022, Beijing and Taipei tacitly recognized the so-called median line of the Strait, an unofficial border.

However, Pelosi’s visit blurred that boundary, whose existence China denies, and marked the increase in the number of incursions by Chinese aircraft into the self-proclaimed Taiwanese Air Identification Zone (ADIZ).

Since then, Chinese military aircraft raids in the Taiwanese ADIZ and beyond the median line have become routine incidentswhich happen practically every week, with the cost that this entails for the island’s Defense, which has to mobilize part of its forces to monitor the movements of the planes coming from the other side of the strait.

A meeting in California between then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy was the trigger for the April 2023 exercises.

The maneuvers focused on the simulation of a “maritime blockade” of the island and on the execution of combat drills and assault practices on “hostile ships on the run.”

Taiwanese military analysts also highlighted the participation of the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, whose presence would have helped China demonstrate that it can “block the island without having to use missiles” and “stop the passage of American ships to support Taiwan” in the event of an invasion.

The August 2023 exercises followed stops in the United States made by Lai, then vice president, on his way to and from South America.

Beijing, which opposes official exchanges between Taiwanese officials and representatives of other countries, reported then that it “verified the actual combat capability” of the participating troops.

The maneuvers carried out this Thursday once again highlight the preparations for a “maritime blockade” scenario, which would be, according to analysts cited by the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, “more attractive” for Beijing, compared to a hypothetical large scale invasion.

Unlike previous maneuvers, these exercises include as targets islands such as Kinmen, controlled by Taipei but located a few kilometers from the Chinese coast, to “put pressure on its military defense space,” according to the Chinese Army.