Dragon Fire

Briefing

The island of Taiwan, 160 kilometres off the eastern Chinese coast, was governed by the Japanese from the 1890s and Taiwanese residents were given Japanese citizenship. For two years after the end of the Second World War it came under mainland Chinese control. Then, in 1949, when the government was overthrown by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party, Taiwan became a stronghold for the fleeing nationalist forces. Taiwan made a remarkable development into a modern society under a mixture of military rule and American benevolence. Taiwan received a jolt of reality in the 1970s when the United States began its rapprochement with China, eventually cutting relations with Taiwan in favour of the mainland. The island continued to thrive. Martial law was lifted in 1987, the first ever direct presidential election was held in 1996 and its foreign reserves became among the highest in the world. Links with the United States remained strong. Taiwan remained protected by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. The act was designed to ‘help maintain peace, security and stability in the Western Pacific’. It also maintained the ‘capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan’. It was deliberately woolly about America’s obligation to go to war with China over Taiwan, but it left the option open.