What happens between China and Taiwan? Are they part of the same country? What is your story and relationship?

(CNN Spanish) — Taiwan and its strained relations with China are once again drawing the world’s attention: This Saturday, voters on the self-governing island will elect their new leader under the shadow of Beijing, which has stepped up its threats against Taipei over the past eight years.

The world is watching closely not only the election winner, but how Taiwan’s authoritarian neighbor will respond. Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader in a generation, has called Taiwan’s unification with the mainland a “historical imperative” to be achieved by force if necessary.

The last time Taiwan changed governments — when the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came to power in 2016 — Beijing cut off most communications with Taipei and significantly increased economic, diplomatic and military pressure on the island in the years that followed. , turning the Taiwan Strait into one of the world’s major geopolitical flashpoints.

But the tension between China and Taiwan does not end there.

In August 2022, then-Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi raised similar tensions during a visit to the island, which in recent years has become a frequent symbol of the rivalry between the two major economic powers, the United States and China. in the world

Pelosi landed in Taiwan as part of her Asia tour, and amid repeated threats from China on the trip, she said some US politicians were “playing with fire.” It was the first time in 25 years that the Speaker of the House of Representatives visited the island.

Every gesture from Washington to Taipei regularly draws a response from Beijing, and there have been several in 2022: the latest was last week, when Pelosi’s intentions to travel to Taiwan became known.

China’s foreign ministry later vowed to take “resolute and forceful measures” if the trip went ahead.

In May 2022, there was another state of tension, when the President of the United States, Joe Biden, said that his country would respond militarily if China intervened in Taiwan, in the context that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had caused concern in Taipei. Possible similar action by Beijing.

“We agree with the One China policy. We signed it and all the corresponding agreements were made there, but the idea that it can be taken by force, only by force, is not right,” Biden said.

When a group of US senators flew to Taiwan in June 2021 on a military plane to announce a large donation of Covid-19 vaccines, the trip was seen by Beijing as the latest in a series of provocations.

And in October of that year, meanwhile, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, some 150 Chinese warplanes flew near Taiwan airspace in the largest incursion ever.

The tension is a reminder of the decades-long rivalry between the governments of Beijing and Taipei, with both sides historically claiming to be the legitimate rulers of all Chinese territory, including Taiwan.

Here, a look at this historic controversy.

Nationalist government

Taiwan’s official name, the Republic of China, dates from its establishment in 1911 after the fall of China’s last imperial dynasty.

Under the government of the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek, the Republic of China faced the advance of the Empire of Japan in the early 1930s and later during World War II, as well as the growing power of the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong.

(After Japan’s defeat in 1945, the Republic of China regained the island of Taiwan, which China had lost in an earlier war with the Japanese, but four years later in 1949 the Kuomintang was defeated by the Communist Party’s forces on the mainland in a bloody civil war.

That same year Mao founded the People’s Republic of China, with its capital in Beijing.

About 1.2 million Chinese, mainly military, were estimated by Taiwanese authorities, and supported Chiang Kai-shek’s government in emigration to Taiwan, defeating a brief incursion by Communist troops on the island. They managed to settle there.

Mao’s forces, in contrast, extended their control into mainland China, and since then Taiwan has been regarded as a renegade province and “inalienable part” that will eventually return to Beijing’s control.

Regional disputes, global tensions

Separated by a strait of opposing ideological status and historical conflict, the two Chinas – the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China – have since coexisted under tension, despite sharing traditions, culture and a common language, Mandarin Chinese.

This tension between Beijing and Taipei has always been linked to the difficult relationship between Beijing and Washington.

The United States government, an ally of the Kuomintang during World War II, initially did not recognize the legitimacy of the communist government in mainland China. On the contrary, he continued to extend his political support to Taipei.

UN member states, however, recognized the legitimacy of the People’s Republic in 1971, including its permanent seat on the Security Council, which was until then occupied by Taipei.

On the other hand, relations between China and the United States that began in the early 1970s and in the middle of the Cold War led to the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979, and the relocation of the American embassy. Taipei to Beijing.

But far from signaling a break in ties with Taiwan, the US has maintained strong commercial and military ties with the island, which it considers a key ally in the region under a framework of “strategic ambiguity”.

This includes Washington’s commitment to Taiwan, a democratically governed island of more than 23 million people, to defend itself against a possible communist invasion by China.

“A Chinese”

For decades, the Taiwan Strait has been the scene of military tensions and clashes between China and Taiwan, and Beijing has even bombarded the outer islands controlled by Taipei on two occasions.

The last major crisis between 1995 and 1996 occurred after then-Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui’s visit to the United States. In response to the meeting, China fired missiles into waters near Taiwan and the United States sent two aircraft carriers to the area.

At the same time, representatives from mainland China and Taiwan covered the early 1990s, through the 1992 summit in Hong Kong, which was then under the control of the United Kingdom.

The pro-reunification parties in Beijing and Taiwan assert that during that meeting there was agreement regarding the principle of “One China”, that is, both sides recognize the existence of a single country that must be reunified.

But they disagreed over who had the legal authority to do so, and even over the scope of the “1992 Consensus,” still rejected today by Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, whose party has traditionally defended the island’s formal independence.

“There is only one China and the government of the People’s Republic is the only legitimate one and Taiwan is part of China,” says the Foreign Ministry in Beijing.

The official position on reunification in Taiwan is more ambiguous and the island’s governments have tried to maintain the status quo. But the Kuomintang and other reunification forces also insist that the Republic of China is the legitimate government of the entire region.

With reporting by Simon McCarthy, Eric Cheung, Nectar Gan, Brad Landon, Kevin Liptak, Donald Judd, Wayne Chang and Ben Westcott.