Taiwan: Explaining the U.S.-China dispute and why it matters

The future of the self-ruling democracy, which Beijing claims as its territory, is among the biggest flashpoints in relations between the world’s two largest economies.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — U.S. officials had an unmistakable message for China this week: We stand with Taiwan.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., defied Chinese threats of retaliation by appearing with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in California, the most senior U.S. official to meet with a Taiwanese leader on U.S. soil in decades. As soon as Tsai returns to Taiwan, she will meet with a bipartisan congressional delegation led by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

China accused McCarthy and Tsai of promoting the independence of Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. The status of Taiwan is among the biggest flashpoints in U.S.-China relations, which are at their lowest point in decades. Though the United States does not have official relations with Taiwan, it is the island’s most important international backer.

There are political, economic and cultural reasons Americans should care about Taiwan, said Lev Nachman, a political scientist and assistant professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

“Politically, it helps keep peace and stability in the world for Taiwan to remain a free and fair democracy as it exists,” he said.

“Economically, Taiwan is one of the United States’s most important trading partners, and one of the most important economic pieces of the global economy,” particularly as a manufacturer of strategically important semiconductor chips.

Culturally, Nachman said, “what the everyday American wants is very similar to what the everyday Taiwanese person wants, which is to be able to wake up and try to fulfill whatever their livelihood dreams are.”

Here’s how the dispute started and why it matters.

What is the origin of the Taiwan issue?

The roots go back almost 75 years to 1949, when the ruling Nationalist Party (also known as the Kuomintang, or KMT) led by Gen. Chiang Kai-shek was defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War.

The defeated government, known as the Republic of China, fled to Taiwan, an island 100 miles off the southeastern Chinese coast that is almost twice the size of New Jersey. In Beijing, Mao established his own government, which is still known today as the People’s Republic of China. Both declared themselves the sole legitimate Chinese government.

The split was — and is — a sore subject for Beijing. Like Chinese leaders before him, President Xi Jinping says China — which shares deep economic and trade ties with Taiwan — seeks peaceful unification with the island but has not ruled out the use of force to bring it under control.

As China’s military capabilities have increased in recent decades, so has its pressure on Taiwan. Near-daily activity such as sorties by Chinese warplanes has further intensified since Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time, visited the island last August.

The Chinese Communist Party has never controlled Taiwan, which before the end of World War II had spent centuries being colonized by the Netherlands, Spain, China and Japan. Because it is not widely recognized as an independent nation, Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations and has formal diplomatic ties with only 13 countries.

Tsai — like the majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people as reflected in public opinion polls — says that she favors maintaining the status quo and that Taiwan does not need to declare independence because it is already an independent nation in practice.

The situation “means that Taiwan gets to exist as a free democracy in the world, but kind of constantly under this threat from China,” Nachman said.

From Beijing's point of view, democracy in Taiwan doesn't trump Chinese sovereignty.

“Xi Jinping stressed that the Taiwan question is the core of China’s core interest,” Xi told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Beijing on Thursday according to a statement. “Those who expect China to compromise and back down on the Taiwan question are delusional and will only shoot themselves in the foot.”