This is Part 2 of a 2-Part series. Part 1 covered events that led to the separation of Taiwan from Mainland China and both countries claiming themselves to be the ‘real’ China. Part 2 explores how all this led to the current tension between the two ‘regions’.
From the time the Kuomintang rulers, officers and others fled to Taiwan from Mainland China in 1949, both Taiwan and People’s Republic of China continued to claim themselves to be official China.
However, gradually international recognition began to shift towards the People’s Republic of China (modern-day China).
And in 1971, with the passing of a resolution in the UN, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was recognized as the legitimate government of China.
In 1979, the US, who had so far been siding with Taiwan, broke all diplomatic ties with it.
Meanwhile, Taiwan & PRC maintained zero-contact with each other, mostly because of Taiwan’s resistance to engagement.
Eventually, in 1992, both reached a consensus that there is only one country encompassing both mainland China and Taiwan but disagreed about which of the two governments is the legitimate government of this state.
Both also agreed that Chinese unification was the ultimate goal and that the current situation was temporary.
All this was happening while Kuomintang was the ruling partyTaiwan was a one-party state till 1996 when it started popular vote. In the first election by vote, Kuomintang came to power. of Taiwan; however, in 2000 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came to power.
Now, DPP didn’t agree (and still doesn’t) with the 1992 consensus and strongly supported the idea of Taiwan being an independent country.
But all of this has been unofficial because the People’s Republic of China has several times threatened to start a war if the government of Taiwan formalizes independence.
In 2016, DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen, the then-recently elected President made contact with Donald Trump and it was seen as a huge step as the US had cut all formal ties with Taiwan in 1979.
In 2018, China began pressurizing international companies to list Taiwan as a part of China on their websites and threatened to block them for doing business in China if they failed to comply.
In August 2020, when the US-China relations are at an all-time low, America’s support of Taiwan and implicit recognition of it being a separate countryAlex Azar’s, the United States Health and Human Services secretary, meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in August was seen by China as a breach of One China Principle.has led to rising tensions between China & Taiwan.
