China says ‘ready to fight’ attempts at Taiwan independence: What is behind this tussle?

In a statement, the Chinese military said, “The theatre’s troops are ready to fight at all times and can fight at any time to resolutely smash any form of ‘Taiwan independence’ and foreign interference attempts”.

Largely unrecognised by other nations, Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign country. However, China considers it to be a breakaway state and is determined to bring the island under its control.

Worsening of the situation can lead to grave geopolitical consequences, as a clash between China and Taiwan could drag in the US. Although the Americans don’t have official ties with the island, they do have a law which requires them to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.

Origin of the conflict

Taiwan, earlier known as Formosa, a tiny island off the east coast of China, is where Chinese republicans of the Kuomintang government retreated after the 1949 victory of the communists — and it has since continued as the Republic of China. The island is located in the East China Sea, to the northeast of Hong Kong, north of the Philippines and south of South Korea, and southwest of Japan. What happens in and around Taiwan is of deep concern to all of East Asia.

Taiwan observes October 10 — “double 10” — as its national day; it was on this day in 1911 that sections of the Manchu army rose in rebellion, leading ultimately to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the end of 4,000 years of the monarchy. The RoC was declared on December 29, 1911, and it found its feet in the 1920s under the leadership of Dr Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang (KMT) Party.

Sun was succeeded by General Chiang Kai-shek, whose actions against the Chinese communists, who were part of an alliance with the KMT, triggered the civil war that ended in victory for the communists and the retreat of Chiang and the KMT to Taiwan.

Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has believed that Taiwan must be reunified with the mainland, while the RoC has held out as an “independent” country. The RoC became the non-communist frontier against China during the Cold War, and was the only ‘China’ recognised at the UN until 1971. That was when the US inaugurated ties with China through the secret diplomacy of Henry Kissinger, national security adviser to President Richard Nixon.

The US backs Taiwan’s independence, maintains ties with Taipei, and sells weapons to it — but officially subscribes to PRC’s “One China Policy”, which means there is only one legitimate Chinese government. Just 14, mostly very small, countries recognise Taiwan.

The Escalation

In 1954-55, and in 1958, the PRC bombed the Jinmen, Mazu, and Dachen islands under Taiwan’s control, drawing in the US. Congress passed the Formosa Resolution, authorising President Dwight D Eisenhower to defend RoC territory.

In 1955, Premier Zhou En-lai declared at the Bandung Conference that he wanted negotiations with the US. But as civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1958, China resumed the bombing, provoking the US to supply Taiwanese outposts on the islands. The PRC and ROC then arrived at an arrangement to bomb each other’s garrisons on alternate days – this continued until 1971. (‘Milestones in the History of US Foreign Relations’, history.state.gov)

The most serious encounter was in 1995-96, when China began testing missiles in the seas around Taiwan, triggering the biggest US mobilisation in the region since the Vietnam War. The tests led to the re-election in 1996 of President Lee Teng-hui, seen by the Chinese as a pro-independence leader.

Recent developments in Taiwan

In 1975, Chiang Kai-shek died, martial law was lifted, and Taiwan got its first democratic reforms. Starting from the 1990s, and despite the missile crisis, relations between the PRC and RoC improved, and trade ties were established. As the British prepared to exit Hong Kong in 1999, the “One China, Two Systems” solution was offered to Taiwan as well, but it was rejected by the Taiwanese.

In 2000, Taiwan got its first non-KMT government, when the Taiwanese nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the presidency. In 2004, China started drafting an anti-secession law aimed at Taiwan; trade and connectivity, however, continued to improve.

Today, the two big players in Taiwan’s politics are the DPP and KMT, broadly the parties of the island’s Hakka inhabitants and the minority mainland Chinese respectively. The 2016 election of President Tsai marked the onset of a sharp pro-independence phase in Taiwan, and the current tensions with China coincided with her re-election in 2020.

Taiwan now has massive economic interests, including investments in China, and pro-independence sections worry that this might come in the way of their goals. Inversely, the pro-reunification sections of the polity, as well as China, hope that economic dependence and increasing people-to-people contacts will wear out the pro-independence lobbies.

Build up to the current round of tensions

In 2020, amid worsening US-China relations over Covid and trade, the State Department sent its highest-ranking delegation till then to Taipei. During the visit, the Chinese conducted a military exercise in the Taiwan Strait, which separates Taiwan from mainland China.

In October of that year, President Xi Jinping asked the PLA to prepare for war, triggering alarm in Taiwan, which read it as an open threat.

After assuming charge in January 2021, the President Joe Biden Administration declared America’s “rock solid” commitment to Taiwan. In April next year, Taiwan reported Chinese jets in its air defence zone. In July 2022, Xi warned that he would “smash” any Taiwanese move towards independence.

At the beginning of October 2021, as the Chinese jets came back, Taiwanese Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told Parliament that China already has the capacity to invade Taiwan, and would be able to “bring the cost and attrition to its lowest” by 2025.

Tensions rose once again when then Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan to demonstrate American “solidarity” with the island. China responded to the development by launching missile strikes on targets in the seas around Taiwan and imposing restrictions on the import of the island’s food brands.

As mentioned before, the latest round of tensions has come after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen went to the US earlier this month and met the current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California. According to Reuters, McCarthy became the “most senior US figure to meet a Taiwanese leader on US soil in decades” as he “stressed the need to accelerate arms deliveries to Taiwan in the face of rising threats from China.”

Beijing, in turn, vowed a “resolute response” and sent warships into the waters and later launched three days of large-scale combat exercises around Taiwan.