BEIJING (AP) — China’s decision to deploy heavy firepower in military exercises in the waters near Taiwan this week has deep roots — both in the past few weeks and decades.
The island is China’s most sensitive political topic. This has been the case since Taiwan split from the mainland in 1949 following a civil war. Today, although the island is self-governing, China claims it as sovereign territory.
China regularly holds military exercises around Taiwan, whether in response to what it sees as specific provocations or general provocations. Here’s the background to the latest exercise.
How did Taiwan implement partition and rule?
From 1927 to 1949, China was ruled by the Kuomintang. After the civil war broke out and Mao Zedong’s Communists overthrew the Kuomintang, they fled to Taiwan on China’s southern coast.
They established a government there that developed into a multi-party democracy and have ruled the island ever since. But Beijing considers it sovereign territory and says it reserves the right to take over if it wishes. Discussions about eventual unification were frequent and lively.
At the same time, Taiwan has become increasingly diplomatically isolated. After Washington and Beijing established diplomatic relations in 1979, the United States no longer recognized Taiwan, but the United States still had an obligation to help Taiwan defend itself.
Other countries have also changed their allegiances under pressure from the Chinese government. Today, only 11 of the United Nations’ 193 member states – as well as the Vatican – have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Why Taiwan is so important to China
It’s a matter of pride and a matter of strategy.
First, strategy: For centuries, China has struggled to maintain control and sovereignty over its peripheries; that’s why construction of the Great Wall began centuries ago – to fortify the territory and ward off nomadic incursions. It is no coincidence, then, that the greatest security concerns of modern governments are usually Taiwan and Hong Kong on the southeastern fringe, and Xinjiang and Tibet in the far west.
In the case of Taiwan, China’s longstanding tensions with Japan have fueled this caution, as has uncertainty about how the United States would respond if the island were to be directly threatened.
Second, pride: sovereignty and dignity are the fundamental pillars of China’s independent political image. The government does not allow the international community to interfere in what it considers to be its internal affairs – and that includes Taiwan.
This means that any idea that Taiwan is its own country, even in passing, is expressly prohibited – even when it comes to maps and graphics (China often bristles when it calls Taiwan a “country”) and the Taiwanese Olympic team (which is only allowed to compete using the name “Chinese Taipei”).
Why China wants to hold drills now
Two main reasons: Japan and the United States.
Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said she would not rule out military intervention if neighboring Taiwan came under direct threat from China. “If it involves the use of warships and military operations, it could become an survival-threatening situation anyway,” Gao Yi said.
Her rhetoric was stronger than that of her predecessor and drew sharp condemnation from Beijing.
Such comments are particularly sensitive given the history of China and Japan. There remains widespread anger and suspicion in China about Japan and its motives, an anger and suspicion that was sown generations ago, when the Japanese Empire (which had colonized Taiwan since 1895) brutally occupied parts of China in the years before World War II. The deep scars of that era remain in China’s collective psyche, with state-controlled traditional and social media often stoking outrage.
Then, last week, U.S. President Donald Trump’s State Department announced it would sell Taiwan a slew of weapons worth more than $10 billion, including medium-range missiles, howitzers and drones. If approved by Congress, which seems likely, it would be the largest U.S. arms program against Taiwan in history, exceeding the $8.4 billion in U.S. military sales to Taiwan under President Joe Biden.
China said the move would harm its sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said: “This cannot save the destined fate of ‘Taiwan independence’, and will only accelerate the dangerous situation of military confrontation and war across the Taiwan Strait.” “Using Taiwan to contain China will not succeed.”
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Ted Anthony has been writing about China for The Associated Press since 1994 and served as AP’s China news editor from 2002 to 2004.
