The recent visit to Taiwan by US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, followed by several days of Chinese military drills, reminded us of the extent to which the situation around the Taiwan Strait was tense. While Beijing’s position has not changed in recent decades, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s growing desire to seize Taiwan by force if necessary is destabilizing the precarious and shifting status quo that has prevailed around the Straits since the second half of the 20th century consists.
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What is Taiwan?
Taiwan (or Republic of China in its official name) is a country in Southeast Asia, established since 1949 primarily on the island of Taiwan, but whose sovereignty extends over 166 islands off the coast of mainland China and the Taiwanese coast.
The island of Taiwan (formerly known as the island of Formosa), which accounts for 99.5% of the country’s area, lies 150 kilometers east of the south coast of mainland China and covers 35,801 square kilometers, six times the average size of a French department. It consists of 60% mountains on its western part with 62 peaks over 3,000 meters high and urbanized plains on its west coast. The seat of power is in the capital Taipei in the north of the country.
Taiwan versus the People’s Republic of China
Islands of Taiwan
state waters
centerline
Xiamen Kaohsiung Fuzhou Taipei CHINA TAIWAN SENKAKU ISLANDS (JAPAN) BATANES ISLANDS (PHILIPPINES)
Sources: Flanders Naval Institute
Taiwan has around 23.6 million inhabitants and, in addition to the main island, manages five island groups that are more or less close to the mainland: the Penghu Islands, the Kinmen Islands, the Wuqiu Islands, the Matsu Islands and the Pratas Islands.
How are Taiwan-China relations?
Relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC, Beijing-ruled Mainland China) and Taiwan have always been very complicated.
- 1927-1949: The civil war opposes communists and nationalists
The Republic of China was founded in 1912 after the fall of the last Chinese imperial dynasty. After a period of political instability, the country was eventually ruled by the nationalist Kuomintang Party and its leader Sun Yat-sen, who allied with the fledgling Chinese Communist Party, which was supported by Moscow. When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, his successor Wang Jingwei wanted to continue this alliance, unlike his rival Chiang Kai-shek, an anti-communist soldier at the head of the party army who decided to oust the communists in 1926 and 1927, they were violently repressed . China then fell into a civil war between nationalists and communists.
In the face of the Japanese invasion of 1937, the two factions formed a united front, but hostilities resumed at the end of World War II in 1945. Kuomintang nationalist troops landed that year on the island of Taiwan, which had just been liberated from the Japanese occupation to make it a rear base.
In 1949, the communists definitely took advantage of the nationalist troops and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. After the defeat, around 1.3 million Chinese and Chiang Kai-shek had to retreat to the island of Taiwan, where the continuation of the Republic of China from 1912 was founded in 1945.
- After 1949, the Chinese Communists’ struggle against the recognition of Taiwan
After 1949, in the context of the Cold War, most Western countries continued to recognize the ROC (based in Taiwan) as China’s legitimate representative at the international level, especially since it had signed the United Nations Charter in 1944, five years before the advent of the communist power in Beijing.
From the beginning of the coexistence of the two regimes, each of them claimed sovereignty over all Chinese territory. In the summer of 1950, the Communists planned to invade Taiwan to retake it from the Nationalists, but US President Harry Truman responded by sending the US Navy’s powerful Seventh Fleet into the waters of the Straits. He has also repeatedly discouraged Taiwanese nationalists from taking back mainland China by force.
The United States is among the first countries to provide economic and military support to Taiwan’s fight against communist influence in the region. In December 1954, during the first cross-strait crisis, a mutual defense agreement was signed between Taipei and Washington.
Nevertheless, from the 1960s and 1970s, under pressure from the communist regime in Beijing, a growing number of nations began to recognize it as the sole representative of China. France was one of the first countries to pave the way in January 1964 by establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing and offering Chiang Kai-shek to continue Franco-Taiwanese relations, which the latter declined. In 1971, the vote on Resolution 2758 at the United Nations Organization (UN) sanctified the efforts of the communists: Beijing was recognized by the United Nations as China’s sole representative. The PRC immediately replaced the ROC at the United Nations and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.
In 1979, thanks to a cooling in relations between Communist China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the United States drew closer to the PRC by officially recognizing it. The US Congress passes the Taiwan Relations Act, redefining diplomatic relations with Taiwan and nullifying all previously signed bilateral treaties. Washington’s hands are no longer tied, but it continues to supply arms to Taipei to enable it to ensure its military defenses.
- A fragile status quo since 1979
Beijing, for its part, has never stopped affirming the principle of one China and regards Taiwan as a rebel province. Under his pressure, recognition of Taiwan has also waned: since 2016, eight countries have severed diplomatic ties with the island, most recently Nicaragua in December 2021. In 2022, there are only 14 countries that officially recognize the Republic of China, Latin America, the Pacific, and the Vatican. This does not prevent the country from maintaining non-diplomatic relations with many nations as it has 111 missions in 74 countries.
The one China principle was set in stone with the passage of an anti-secession law in Beijing in March 2005, which encourages reunification with Taiwan by peaceful means but allows the use of force in three scenarios:
- if the Taiwanese “separate Taiwan from China”;
- if an incident could lead to the “separation of Taiwan from China”;
- in the event of the loss of any possibility of peaceful reunification.
These scenarios are interpreted by the Taiwanese as threats. Since then, Taiwan has lived in a precarious status quo, despite spectacular economic development and genuine democracy after the opposition’s victory in 2000. The island is trying to settle relations with the regime in Beijing, with whom it trades extensively, in exchange for a promise to advocate a peaceful solution to the situation.
But this status quo has deteriorated in recent years. The 2016 election of Democrat Tsai Ing-wen, who is more sovereign than her Kuomintang predecessor and has traditionally been open to China, greatly angered Xi Jinping. The latter has since proved much more aggressive in making “unification” with Taiwan a priority that “cannot be left to future generations.” Stop using violence.