China claims Taiwan, a “renegade” province according to Beijing, as an inalienable part of its territory and is determined to protect its sovereignty. Meanwhile, Taiwan seeks independence and recognition as a State by international organizations. What is behind these tensions? What is the relationship between Taiwan and the United States that irritates Beijing? We take stock.
Both China and Taiwan separately say they are one country, but disagree over which is entitled to national leadership on the island. They have no official relations, but are linked by billions of dollars in trade and investment. China only rules mainland China, but claims Taiwan as part of its territory under the “one China principle.”
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and considers the island a “renegade” province since the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, withdrew there in 1949, after losing the civil war against the Communist Party that seized power from mainland China.
In addition, Beijing has stated that one day Taipei, sooner or later, will be “reunified” with the rest of its territory.
The Asian giant has reiterated that Taiwan has no right to maintain foreign relations and considers that the visits of US officials are an encouragement for the island to formalize its de facto independence for decades.
For its part, Taiwan, an island of about 36,000 kilometers, located 200 km southeast of the coasts of mainland China (separated by the Taiwan Strait) and the south of Japan, seeks its independence and recognition as an independent State by the of international organizations.
What is the current status of Taiwan?
The United Nations Organization (UN) does not recognize Taiwan as a State, although most of the 23 million Taiwanese consider themselves independent, governed democratically with elected leaders and claiming that they are a sovereign State, however, this has never officially declared its independence.
Taiwan, also known by its official name: Republic of China (ROC) which dates back to its founding in 1911 after the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty, today has its own Constitution, and around 300,000 active troops in its armed forces.
Under pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the UN continues to reject Taiwan by supporting its exclusion in Resolution 2758 of the UN General Assembly of 1971, for purely political reasons.
However, the resolution only addresses the issue of China’s representation in the UN and there is no claim of sovereignty over Taiwan, but China equates the language of the resolution with the “one China principle”, imposing its point of political view of the UN.
Before the 1971 resolution, the DRC government under Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to Taiwan in 1949, initially declared that it represented all of China and that it intended to retake the entire territory again. Indeed, it held a seat on the UN Security Council as China’s sole government, but the Organization later transferred diplomatic recognition to Beijing.
And Taiwan was only left with the recognition as a State of 13 nations, plus the Vatican.
What are the links between China and Taiwan?
Valérie Niquet, a specialist in strategic and political issues in Asia consulted by the French media ‘Le Parisien’ explains that China’s position has hardened since Xi Jinping came to power. “But in reality, Taiwan never really belonged to China, so talk of reunification is a decoy. In the past, China did not exercise real control over the island, it was simply a zone of influence”, points out the author of “Taiwan versus China”.
The expert argues that “the acquisition of Taiwan has more of an ideological dimension, with the main objective of keeping the regime in power, considering that democracy is a Western value. An increasingly nationalist discourse is developing in China, with the Chinese dream, the rebirth of the Chinese nation, passing through the reunification of Taiwan”.
What is the motive behind the China-US tensions? US?
The entry into the scene of the United States comes because Washington is the main supplier of weapons to the Taiwanese Army and would be its greatest military ally in the event of a war with the Asian giant, aid expressed by the United States on several occasions.
In fact, President Joe Biden’s last comment on the matter was in May 2022 when he said the US would intervene “militarily” should China invade Taiwan.
Officials in the Biden Administration immediately reversed the comment, which would have broken a long-standing policy of ambiguity about what the American Union would do if China tried to take Taiwan by force, as analyzed by ‘The Conversation’, a source independent and non-profit news and commentary from academic experts, quoted by the AP agency.
This fact is one of the main reasons for the conflict between China and the United States that maintained the recognition of Taiwan for 30 years after the Chinese Civil War, but changed in 1979 recognizing the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the only legal Government.
As part of this change, the North American country cut formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and replaced the embassy on the island with a non-governmental entity called the American Institute in Taiwan.
“The Institute was a de facto embassy,” says ‘The Conversation’. Until 2002, Americans assigned to the Institute had to resign from the US State Department in order to go there. So the contact between the two governments was technically unofficial.
How have Taipei-Washington relations irritated Beijing?
As the Taiwanese government pursued democracy – from the lifting of martial law in 1987 to the first fully democratic elections in 1996 – it moved away from the assumption once held by the Chinese and Taiwanese governments of eventual reunification with the continent.
The government in China, however, has never abandoned the “one China” idea and rejects the legitimacy of Taiwanese self-government. This has made direct contact between Taiwan and US representatives infuriating Chinese officials.
In fact, in 1995, when Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan’s first democratically elected president, landed in Hawaii en route to Central America, he never even stepped foot on the tarmac.
The US State Department had already warned that the president would be denied an entry visa to the US, but had allowed a brief low-level reception in the airport lounge during refueling. Apparently feeling slighted, Lee refused to leave the plane.
Two years after this incident (in 1997) came a visit to Taiwan by then House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Although the visit upset Beijing, it was easier for the White House to distance itself from Gingrich, since he was a Republican politician visiting Taiwan without the endorsement of then-President Bill Clinton.
Then in 2018 came a kind of policy change. The US Congress passed the ‘Taiwan Travel Act’ and signed by then President Donald Trump, which allows officials to travel to Taipei to meet with their peers and facilitate mutual relations. Although they did it before, the meetings were kept low-key so as not to offend China.
Following this law, Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar became the highest-ranking (unelected) US official to visit Taiwan since 1979. Then, in 2020, Keith Krach, Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and Environment, visited Taiwan.
And in April 2022, a congressional delegation arrived on the island. Indeed, Pelosi herself was going to go in the procession that same month, but she was canceled after testing positive for Covid-19.
A high-profile visit like the one on Tuesday, August 2, by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, “would signal support for the island at a time when the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has raised questions about the commitment of the international community to protect smaller states from more powerful neighbors”, analyzes ‘The Conversation’.
Among the new tensions that have increased in the Taiwan Strait, also known as Formosa, in the last year, is the increase in the number of incursions by Chinese planes into Taiwan’s self-defined aerial identification zone (ADIZ) and the president’s statements Taiwanese Tsai Ing-wen, admitting that the United States has a military presence on the island, something that Beijing has described as “provocation”.
The military deployment that is seen this Tuesday in the strait is compared by the Chinese press as the one that occurred with the missile crisis in Cuba.
With AP, EFE and international media
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