In his opening speech of 2019, and his first ever on the subject of Taiwan, the Chinese president Xi Jinping was characteristically uncompromising. Forty years after Beijing agreed to stop its daily shelling of the Taiwanese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and launched a policy of commercial seduction, relations have coarsened. Addressing an audience of military and party officials and his country’s wider public on 2 January, China’s nationalist president-for-life signalled his impatience with the status quo, refused to rule out the use of military force and warned “foreign powers” against intervening in what Beijing regards as a domestic matter. For any Taiwanese viewer, it was a chilling moment.
The two jurisdictions have been antagonists since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist Party (KMT) took refuge in Taiwan, 110 miles offshore, leaving Mao’s Communist Party in charge of the mainland. Taiwan, with US support, continued to hold China’s seat on the UN Security Council. Both sides in the conflict took the view that there was only one China – they simply disagreed over which party should rule it.
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