BEIJING (AP) — China’s decision to bring serious firepower to military exercises in the waters off Taiwan this week has deep roots — as much in recent weeks as in recent decades.
The island is the most sensitive political subject for China. It has been since Taiwan split from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war. Today, although the island governs itself, China claims it as sovereign territory.
China has often conducted military exercises around Taiwan, both around what it considers specific provocations and in general. Here’s a look at the context surrounding the latest exercises.
How Taiwan came to be governed separately
China was ruled by the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, from 1927 to 1949. When civil war broke out, and Mao Zedong’s communists defeated the Nationalists, they fled to Taiwan, off the coast of southern China.
There, they set up a government, which evolved into a multi-party democracy that has ruled the island ever since. But the government in Beijing considers it a sovereign territory and says it reserves the right to take it over if it wishes. Talk of eventual reunification is frequent and fervent.
Meanwhile, Taiwan grows more diplomatically isolated with each passing year. The United States ceased to recognize it when Washington and Beijing established relations in 1979, although the United States remains obligated to help Taiwan defend itself.
And other nations, under pressure from the Chinese government, switched allegiances as well. Today, only 11 of the 193 member states of the United Nations — and the Holy See at the Vatican — have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Why Taiwan is so important to China
It is a matter of pride and a matter of strategy.
First, strategy: China has struggled for centuries to maintain control and sovereignty at its edges; that’s why the Great Wall was built in the first place centuries ago — to fortify the territory against incursions by nomads. It is no coincidence, then, that the modern government’s greatest security concerns are typically Taiwan and Hong Kong off its southeastern edge and Xinjiang and Tibet to its far west.
In the case of Taiwan, China’s long-standing tension with Japan helps fuel this caution, as does uncertainty about how exactly the United States would respond if the island came under direct threat.
Second, pride: Sovereignty and dignity are fundamental pillars of China’s self-built political image. The government rejects any international interference in what it considers internal affairs – and that includes Taiwan.
This means that any notion, even in passing, that Taiwan is its own nation is expressly forbidden – even when it comes to maps and graphics (China often pops up when referring to Taiwan as a “country”) and the Taiwanese Olympic team (which is only allowed to compete using the name “Chinese Taipei”).
Why China wants to hold exercises now
Two main reasons: Japan and the United States.
Last month, the Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, said that she does not rule out military intervention if neighboring Taiwan comes under direct threat from China. “If it involves the use of warships and military actions, it can by all means become a survival-threatening situation,” Takaichi said.
Her comments were stronger than those before her and drew a strong rebuke from Beijing.
Such remarks are particularly sensitive in light of the history of China and Japan. There is still widespread anger and suspicion in China about Japan and its motives, sown generations ago when imperial Japan — which had already colonized Taiwan in 1895 — brutally seized parts of China in the years before World War II. Deep scars of that time remain in the Chinese collective psyche, with outrage often stoked by state-controlled traditional and social media.
Then, last week, US President Donald Trump’s State Department announced that it would sell a huge arms package worth more than $10 billion to Taiwan — including medium-range missiles, howitzers and drones. If approved by Congress, which seems likely, it would be the largest US arms package ever to Taiwan, surpassing the $8.4 billion in US arms sales to the island under President Joe Biden.
China said this move harms its sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.
“This cannot save the doomed fate of ‘Taiwan independence’ but will only accelerate the push of the Taiwan Strait towards a dangerous situation of military confrontation and war,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun. “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 was the AP’s China news editor from 2002 to 2004.