Taiwan

From Japanese colony to Chinese province

China ruled Taiwan for about two centuries from the late 17th century.^[1] After losing a war with Japan, it signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, which ceded Taiwan and the P’eng-hu Islands to Japan in perpetuity.^[4] Western powers treated the treaty as binding; China saw it as imposed under duress.^[4]

In the declaration after the Cairo Conference of 1943, the United States and Britain agreed with the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek that Taiwan had been taken from China and would be returned; the Potsdam Conference of 1945 confirmed it.^[4] Taiwan became part of the Republic of China on 25 October 1945, but a formal legal settlement of its status was left for a peace treaty.^[5][4]

Nationalist rule began badly. On 28 February 1947 government agents fired into an angry crowd, and unrest spread across the island. Troops sent from the mainland in March killed thousands.^[5]

Two governments, one seat

In late 1949 Mao Zedong’s communist armies won China’s civil war. Chiang, his government and army fled to Taiwan, some 1.5 million people in all.^[5] The People’s Republic of China ruled the mainland and the Republic of China ruled Taiwan. Taipei went on claiming the mainland, and Beijing claimed Taiwan.^[1]

When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, US President Harry Truman sent the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent an invasion. The United States and its allies backed Taipei’s claim to represent China at the United Nations.^[5] Two crises in the 1950s over Kinmen (Quemoy) and Matsu, islands held by Taipei just off the mainland, led to a US–Taiwan mutual-defense treaty in 1954.^[5]

On 25 October 1971 the UN General Assembly passed resolution 2758. It recognised the People’s Republic’s representatives as “the only legitimate representatives of China” and expelled “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek”.^[3] The resolution does not mention Taiwan by name.^[3] Taiwan’s government kept its claim to the mainland until the early 1990s, when it dropped it.^[1]

“Decides to restore all its rights to the People’s Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of its Government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it.”^[3]

Washington switches

On 15 December 1978 President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic on 1 January 1979.^[6] It acknowledged “the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”, said it would end the 1954 defense treaty, and promised to keep “cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.”^[6] Other countries then hurried to switch their own recognition to Beijing.^[7]

Congress answered with the Taiwan Relations Act, approved on 10 April 1979.^[8] It says US ties with Beijing rest on the expectation that Taiwan’s future will be settled by peaceful means, and commits the United States to provide Taiwan with “arms of a defensive character.”^[8]

“to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States”^[8]

Democracy, and a law in Beijing

Taiwan ruled under martial law until 1987. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) formed in 1986.^[7] In 1996 Lee Teng-hui won the island’s first direct presidential election.^[7] Chinese missile tests in the Taiwan Strait in 1995 and 1996 led President Bill Clinton to send US warships there.^[7]

On 14 March 2005 China’s National People’s Congress adopted the Anti-Secession Law.^[9] It says Taiwan is part of China, and that Beijing “shall employ non-peaceful means” if forces for independence move to separate Taiwan, or if the possibilities for peaceful reunification are “completely exhausted”.^[9]

Pressure since 2016

Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP won the presidency in January 2016 and again in 2020.^[10] In August 2022 US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking elected US official to visit Taiwan in about 25 years, over Beijing’s strong warnings.^[10] On 13 January 2024 Tsai’s vice president, Lai Ching-te, won, the first time one party had won three presidential elections in a row since Taiwan became a democracy.^[10]

On 29 December 2025 China began large drills around the island, code-named “Justice Mission 2025”. They rehearsed a blockade of its main ports, with live rockets fired into the surrounding waters.^[11] It was the sixth time since Pelosi’s visit that China had staged large-scale drills around Taiwan. They came days after the United States announced a $11.1bn weapons package for the island.^[11]

China says Taiwan is part of its territory with no right to relations between states, a position Taiwan’s government strongly disputes. Beijing has slowly reduced the number of countries with formal ties to Taipei, which stood at 12 in May 2026.^[2]