THE CCP TAKES OVER MAINLAND CHINA

While conditions on Taiwan were deteriorating for the Nationalists, a dire situation was emerging on the mainland. There had been periodic skirmishes between the Nationalist government and the Chinese Communist Party for roughly twenty years, but the government was always in a position of strength. The CCP had been making large relative gains in support and strategic advantage until the Japanese mounted a large-scale invasion from Manchuria into eastern China in 1937, which led the country to rally around the government to oppose the foreign occupiers. Even during this period of détente, however, there were rather precise delineations about which faction was supposed to be where, and when CCP units moved outside their approved area of operations skirmishes would erupt with the KMT, even amid fighting against the Japanese.
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THE END OF WORLD WAR II AND THE RETURN OF TAIWAN TO CHINA

As the tide was turning against the Axis powers in World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss the status of Japan’s colonies. The Cairo Declaration of December 1943 determined that all of the territories Japan had taken from China by force were to be returned to China as a condition of Japanese surrender. This decision was further codified in the Potsdam Proclamation of July 1945, which reinforced the conditions set forth in the Cairo Declaration.
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JAPAN’S OCCUPATION OF TAIWAN, 1895-1945

Although the Chinese government had had reluctantly agreed to transfer the island to Japan, people living on Taiwan had their own agenda. On May 23, Taiwan declared itself a republic and set up an independent government. With that government came an army and a mobilization to resist occupation by the Japanese. The founders of the 1895 Taiwanese “republic” shrewdly took Western political labels and applied them to ad hoc institutions, unsuccessfully attempting to obtain French support against the Japanese occupation.²⁰ It took the Japanese military five months to pacify the island, and for four more years the Taiwanese mounted an insurgency campaign that wore on the Japanese.²¹ As one Japanese baron put it: “Japan had made no preparations whatever for the administration of the island at the time of its acquisition.”²²

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THE ORIGINS OF THE TAIWAN PROBLEM, 1895-1979

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Taiwan experienced both colonization by Western powers and occupation and governance by the Ming and Qing dynasties.¹ The Penghu Islands, a small island group off the west coast of Taiwan now considered part of Taiwan, were considered part of China as far back as the fourteenth century. The Dutch and Spanish jockeyed for imperial influence on Taiwan itself in the seventeenth century, with both states establishing a presence on the island.

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America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan: Introduction

THE DANGER OF A COLLISION COURSE

On the surface, America’s relations with China seem to be rather cordial. Tensions spiked in April 2001 over the incident in which a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter plane, but that quarrel soon receded, and ever since the September 11 terrorist attacks China and the United States have cooperated in the campaign against radical Islamic terrorism. More recently, Washington and Beijing have worked together to induce North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, the important economic relationship has continued to grow, with bilateral trade now exceeding $160 billion a year.

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America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. 2013: How the War Began
2. The Origins of the Taiwan Problem, 1895-1979
3. The Taiwan Problem Evolves: 1979-2000
4. Some Ominous Trends in Taiwan
5. Some Ominous Trends in the PRC
6. Washington’s Muddled Policy
7. The Dynamic Military Balance
8. Avoiding Calamity