ORIGINS OF THE TAIWAN STRAIT CRISIS
The long conflict pitting China’s fledgling Communists and the ruling Nationalist government originated in 1927 and stretched into World War II when they upheld a shaky alliance against Japan. In December 1945, with the Japanese evicted from the mainland and Mao Zedong’s generals able to capture Manchuria, a fake truce was arranged in the city of Chungking by the American envoy General George C Marshall that both sides agreed on.
By 1946, however, the Communists went on the offensive. Armed to the teeth and with full Soviet backing, come early 1949 the old imperial capital Peking was theirs. Seeing his own generals bogged down south of the Yangtze River, the Nationalist leader and US ally Chiang Kai-shek decided to withdraw and relocate the government on the island of Formosa (Taiwan), which Japan had colonised from 1895 until 1945 and was nominally controlled by the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
The Republic of China (ROC) in its new home on Taiwan endured decades of martial law, with Kai-shek as lifelong dictator. Within a year after their victory on the mainland in October 1949 the Communists received even more aid from the Soviets and expanded the borders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to Central Asia and Tibet. On 19 October 1950 a massive PRC volunteer army fought American and United Nations troops in the Korean peninsula until the ceasefire in Panmunjom on 27 July 1953. Chairman Mao Zedong, with total faith in the strength of his military, vowed to someday conquer the Nationalists in Taiwan.
The First Taiwan Strait Crisis
Throughout the
