The island seems to have first appeared in Chinese records in AD, when an emperor sent an expeditionary force to explore the area - something Beijing uses to back its territorial claim. After a relatively brief spell as a Dutch colony , Taiwan was administered by China's Qing dynasty from to From the 17th Century, significant numbers of migrants started arriving from China, often fleeing turmoil or hardship.
The descendants of these two migrations are now by far the largest demographic groups on the island. After World War Two, Japan surrendered and relinquished control of territory it had taken from China. But in the next few years a civil war broke out in China, and the then-leader Chiang Kai-shek's troops were beaten back by Mao Zedong's Communist armies.
This group, referred to as Mainland Chinese and then making up 1. Having inherited an effective dictatorship, facing resistance from local people resentful of authoritarian rule and under pressure from a growing democracy movement, Chiang's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, began allowing a process of democratisation.
President Lee Teng-hui, known as Taiwan's "father of democracy", led constitutional changes towards a more democratic political layout, which eventually led to the election of the island's first non-KMT president, Chen Shui-bian, in Relations between China and Taiwan started improving in the s. China put forward a formula, known as "one country, two systems", under which Taiwan would be given significant autonomy if it accepted Chinese reunification. This system was established in Hong Kong to be used as something of a showcase to entice Taiwanese people back to the mainland.
Taiwan rejected the offer, but it did relax rules on visits to and investment in China. In , it also proclaimed the war with the People's Republic of China on the mainland to be over.
There were also limited talks between the two sides' unofficial representatives, though Beijing's insistence that Taiwan's Republic of China ROC government is illegitimate meant government-to-government meetings couldn't happen.
And in , when Taiwan elected Chen Shui-bian as president, Beijing was alarmed. Mr Chen had openly backed "independence". A year after Mr Chen was re-elected in , China passed a so-called anti-secession law, stating China's right to use "non-peaceful means" against Taiwan if it tried to "secede" from China. Mr Chen was succeeded by Ma Ying-jeou, who, after taking office in , sought to improve relations with China through economic agreements. Eight years later, in , Taiwan's current president Tsai Ing-wen was elected.
Despite the lack of formal ties, the US has pledged to supply Taiwan with defensive weapons and has stressed any attack by China would cause "grave concern". Throughout , China stepped up pressure on international companies, forcing them to list Taiwan as a part of China on their websites and threatening to block them for doing business in China if they failed to comply. Ms Tsai won a second term in By that time Hong Kong had seen months of unrest, with protesters demonstrating against the mainland's increasing influence - a development many in Taiwan were watching closely.
Since coming into to power in , Tsai has tiptoed the acceptable bounds of the cross-strait relationship but has never publicly embraced independence nor the Consensus, the latter angering Beijing. Beijing suspended all Chinese tour groups to the island cutting, off a reliable source of revenue on the island. The squeeze almost worked. A year out from the election, Tsai was on shaky ground for re-election but then Hong Kong protests erupted. Emerging from the pandemic with a renewed confidence, Beijing began to refocus its pressure campaign on Taiwan just as its relationship with Washington began to crater.
The incursions only increased this year. In response, the U. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo removed all restrictions between diplomatic contacts between U. The Biden Administration has taken it further by encouraging working ties with Taiwanese officials, even invited the Taiwanese envoy to President Biden's inauguration.
At the same time, Beijing has been nurturing a rise in nationalistic sentiment across the country, fueled in part by their success in suppressing COVID and the growing view that Western powers especially the U. The view was further exasperated by Chinese state media playing up the U. Just as Americans have an increasing unfavorable view of China, the Chinese public has had an increasingly antagonistic view of Americans.
Chinese propaganda and pop culture have been cashing in and normalizing a U. Taiwan is also a major economic force, manufacturing over 60 percent of semiconductors worldwide. Beyond that, it has major strategic value to the U. Meanwhile, Communist China sees Taiwan as a "rogue province," declaring it a top foreign policy objective or domestic policy, depending on how you look at it to bring the island under Beijing's control. For decades, China did little about Taiwan; Unable to conduct a cross-strait invasion, there was nothing it could do, so the Communist Party bided its time and grew the economy instead.
As China's economy expanded in the s, its political clout also grew, and Taiwan became more politically isolated. Recently, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed a more aggressive foreign policy and lavished spending on the People's Liberation Army— especially forces that could one day be used to forcibly return Taiwan into the fold of greater China.
For decades, Taiwan was relatively well-protected from invasion. The Taiwan Strait, approximately miles wide, was an insurmountable obstacle to the People's Republic, which lacked the wealth to fund the Navy and sealift forces needed to make an invasion possible.
Even if China could make it through the Taiwan Strait, the technologically superior Republic of China air and naval forces would make short work of an invasion force. As late as the early s, such an invasion was derisively described as the "million-man swim," and would have almost certainly ended in a turkey shoot—especially if U.
By the early s, China had opened its doors to foreign manufacturing, kicking off a staggering economic transformation. Although China's defense spending as a proportion of the national budget remained the same, the budget itself skyrocketed , resulting in more than two decades of double-digit defense spending increases. Meanwhile, Taiwan's military spending remained more or less flat.
The Republic of China Armed Forces number , active duty troops backed up by 1. Its navy and air force comprise the first line of defense. It also has the most experience versus mainland military forces, regularly intercepting People's Liberation Army Air Force aircraft that fly near the island.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's navy is shifting away from a fleet centered around larger destroyer-sized ships to more sensible missile-armed catamarans , ships better suited to sinking amphibious ships attempting a cross-strait landing. The navy is also developing its own attack submarine to replace four aging subs—including two dating all the way back to World War II.
A major weakness is a lack of modern tanks that could be used to counterattack and drive the invaders into the sea. Meanwhile, the 2. Now, many of those forces are technologically equivalent with their western counterparts. Equipment dating to the s, for instance, has been shelved and replaced with modern versions, often developed by China's defense industry itself. Taiwan's nearly fighters would be outnumbered by the mainland's 1, modern fighters. This total includes Chengdu J fighters China's first fifth-generation stealth fighter , as well as other homemade J, J, and J fighters, plus Russian-made Su and Su fighters.
The People's Republic of China could only send as many planes into combat as local airfields could handle, but it could replenish combat losses relatively quickly. Chinese air defenses such as the Russian-made S surface-to-air missile system will also threaten Taiwanese fighters, with the range to intercept targets over Taiwan itself.
At sea, Beijing is even more powerful. Together , the two fleets include 34 attack submarines, 41 frigates, 23 destroyers, six major amphibious ships, and 45 medium and tank-landing ships. The invasion force would be augmented by commercial car ferries trained to launch amphibious assault craft close to shore. Ground Forces armor, mechanized, and special operations forces would land to bolster the invasion force once beachheads and port facilities were secure.
The air force would transport six parachute brigades and a special operations forces brigade by helicopter, and bring Y transport aircraft behind ROC lines, seizing key objectives.
China maintains a large inventory of short, medium, and long-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The missiles, controlled by the People's Liberation Army Rocket Forces, would be fired from both mobile ground launchers and H-6 bombers.
Hundreds of missiles—each delivering a conventional explosive warhead with a high degree of accuracy, weighing in at a half-ton or more—would batter military and economic targets in Taiwan from the outset of the invasion. The decision to go to war would happen in Beijing, and will kick off a months-long period of preparation and deception.
Such a campaign would likely start off with large-scale People's Liberation Army exercises. Marines and ground forces would practice moving to the coast, loading transport ships, and swimming to shore aboard ZBD amphibious fighting vehicles.
Naval forces would practice shelling targets on the ground, establishing a defensive cordon around landing ships, and preventing outside forces from interfering. Air forces would train in air-to-air combat, strike-and-interdiction missions, and in deploying parachutists.
The military exercises would be held monthly, honing the PLA's ability to fight.
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