Taiwan Strait Crises and Cross-Strait Relations

Missiles on the Eve of an Election

On the morning of March 8, 1996 — two weeks before Taiwan's first direct presidential election — the People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched two Dongfeng-15 ballistic missiles into the sea, one 29 kilometers off Keelung and the other 37 kilometers off Kaohsiung. More than 70 percent of Taiwan's commercial shipping passed through these two ports. The sea lanes were instantly disrupted.

The Taipei stock market plunged. Crowds swarmed Taoyuan Airport to buy plane tickets. The wealthy moved their capital overseas. Television news replayed footage of the missile tests on a loop.

But two weeks later, on March 23, 76 percent of Taiwanese voters walked into polling stations. Lee Teng-hui won with 54 percent of the vote — a full 5 percentage points higher than his pre-crisis polling numbers. The missiles did not scare voters away; they boosted his support.

This was the most ironic moment in seven decades of cross-strait relations: military intimidation produced precisely the outcome the intimidator least wanted.

The Gateway Held by a Thousand Men

Go back forty years. At seven in the morning on January 18, 1955, on a small island called Yijiangshan off the coast of Zhejiang, Colonel Wang Shengming was preparing to face the last day of his life.

The PLA committed 4,000 to 5,000 troops, 186 vessels, and more than 180 aircraft to assault the island. The garrison numbered roughly 1,030 to 1,086 (including Anti-Communist National Salvation Army personnel), with estimates varying across sources — outnumbered by a ratio of roughly 1 to 4 or even 1 to 7. Peng Dehuai, overseeing the operation, remarked: "People say you don't use a butcher's knife to kill a chicken. This time, we are using an ox-slaughtering blade to kill a chicken." This was the PLA's first-ever joint land-sea-air operation, and Beijing could not afford to lose.

The battle lasted less than two days. At 2 a.m. on January 19, the island changed hands. Wang Shengming was killed in action; his deputy commander Wang Fubi was captured. The PLA reported 393 killed and 1,027 wounded. The ROC side reported 720 dead.

Tiny as it was, Yijiangshan was the gateway to the Dachen Islands. After losing it, Chiang Kai-shek decided to abandon the entire Zhoushan archipelago. In February 1955, under the escort of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, all military personnel and civilians were evacuated from Dachen. Chiang Ching-kuo was dispatched to communicate with the residents and left alongside them. Three days later, the PLA occupied all remaining islands along the Zhejiang coast.

The impact of this small battle exceeded everyone's expectations¹. It directly catalyzed the U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty of December 1954, formalizing the American-Taiwan military alliance. At the same time, the nuclear threats issued by the United States during the crisis pushed Beijing to resolve to develop its own nuclear weapons. The fall of a thousand-man island unexpectedly reshaped the strategic landscape of the entire East Asian region.

Forty-Four Days, Four Hundred Seventy Thousand Shells

On the afternoon of August 23, 1958, summer on Kinmen suddenly turned to hell.

At dusk, 569 PLA artillery pieces opened fire simultaneously. Kinmen, an island of roughly 150 square kilometers, absorbed more than 470,000 shells over the following 44 days. It remains one of the highest per-area artillery densities in military history.

The first day brought catastrophic losses. Kinmen Defense Command deputy commanders Zhao Jiaxiang and Zhang Jie were killed on the spot; Ji Xingwen was severely wounded and died three days later from peritonitis. Defense commander Hu Lian and visiting Defense Minister Yu Dawei were both hit by shrapnel. Ji Xingwen was the legendary officer who had fired the first shot of the War of Resistance at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident — he lost his life beside a dining table on Kinmen, taken by an artillery shell.

Life for Kinmen's residents was completely transformed. Thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged; 618 military and civilian personnel were killed, and 2,610 were wounded. Residents were forced to move into underground tunnels. Kinmen subsequently entered a 36-year period of military administration (1956–1992), during which the entire island was under martial law. Residents' daily movements, communications, and economic activities were all subject to military control. Nighttime curfews were enforced, fishermen had to apply for permission to go out to sea, and mail was censored.

Air battles during the artillery war were equally intense. The United States supplied the ROC Air Force with state-of-the-art Sidewinder missiles, establishing air superiority. The U.S. Seventh Fleet helped break the naval blockade and maintain supply lines.

On October 6, Beijing issued the "Message to Compatriots in Taiwan" in the name of Defense Minister Peng Dehuai, announcing a one-week ceasefire on "humanitarian grounds." This was later changed to the "odd-day firing, odd-day pause" pattern: shells on odd-numbered days, silence on even-numbered days. This absurd rhythm continued until January 1, 1979 — the day the United States established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China — when Beijing formally announced the cessation of shelling.

The paradox of the 823 Artillery War is that capturing Kinmen was never the objective from the start². Mao Zedong wanted to test America's resolve to defend Taiwan's outlying islands while signaling to the international community Beijing's stance on "liberating Taiwan." The shells were political signals; the homes of Kinmen's people were the price.

A BBC Chinese report cited a widely circulated view: after this war ended, a military counterattack against the mainland became virtually impossible, and the Taiwanese government turned toward pursuing democracy and freedom. In this sense, the 823 was a "battle for Taiwan's survival." The long peace that followed across the strait, maintaining the status quo of separate governance on both sides, made possible Taiwan's later economic miracle and democratization.

The President Stranded Overnight on a Plane in Hawaii

The seeds of the 1996 missile crisis were actually planted back in 1994.

That year, Lee Teng-hui was returning from South America and his plane stopped to refuel in Honolulu, Hawaii. He applied to the U.S. government for entry permission and was denied. The Clinton administration would not allow him to leave the military airfield where he had landed, forcing him to spend the night on his own plane. A U.S. State Department official privately admitted the situation was "embarrassing." Lee later complained of being "treated as a second-class leader."

This humiliation triggered a chain reaction in Washington. Pro-Taiwan lawmakers began lobbying, and the lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates was brought in to push the effort. In May 1995, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution 396 to 0, and the Senate 97 to 1, demanding that the State Department allow Lee to visit the United States. The State Department relented.

On June 9–10, 1995, Lee returned to his alma mater, Cornell University, as an alumnus and delivered a speech titled "Taiwan's Experience of Democratization"³. In it, he uttered the phrase that enraged Beijing: "Taiwan is a country with independent sovereignty." Beijing's response was four words: "If this can be tolerated, what cannot?" (是可忍，孰不可忍。)

In July, Xinhua announced that the PLA would conduct missile tests. But through a secret channel, Beijing sent a message to Lee's national policy advisor Tseng Yung-hsien: "Our ballistic missiles will be launched in Taiwan's direction in a few weeks, but you don't need to worry." Tseng had met with Yang Shangkun in 1992 as Lee's secret envoy. This back channel meant both sides knew where the red lines were.

From July 21, 1995, the Second Artillery Corps launched six consecutive Dongfeng-15 missiles into waters 36 miles north of Taiwan. From August to November, the East Sea Fleet deployed 59 warships for exercises, and the air force flew 192 sorties.

In early 1996, as Taiwan's first direct presidential election approached, Beijing escalated. Between January and February, 100,000 troops amassed along the coast facing Taiwan. The March 8 missile launches targeted waters directly off Keelung and Kaohsiung. The American response was to dispatch two carrier battle groups — the USS Independence and the USS Nimitz. This was the largest U.S. naval deployment in Asia since the Vietnam War.

The outcome is well known. Lee Teng-hui won the election. The lesson Beijing drew was that its military capabilities were far outmatched by the United States. Jiang Zemin ordered the PLA to launch a ten-year modernization program.

An Uninhabited Island in the Cold War

Between the second and third Taiwan Strait crises lay more than three decades of Cold War confrontation.

In 1971, the Republic of China withdrew from the United Nations. In 1972, Nixon visited China. In 1979, the United States established diplomatic relations with Beijing and severed ties with Taipei. Taiwan grew increasingly isolated internationally, but on the island, the economy took off at a staggering pace, becoming one of the Four Asian Tigers. These were three decades of complete political separation across the strait, with cultural connections between ordinary people sustained only by memory.

In 1987, Taiwan lifted martial law. In the same year, it allowed aging veterans to visit relatives on the mainland. Some had left the mainland as young men in their twenties; they returned as elderly men in their sixties. Forty years of life had been severed by a strait.

In 1992, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) held talks in Hong Kong, reaching an ambiguous agreement later known as the "1992 Consensus." Beijing's reading was that "both sides uphold one China"; Taipei's reading was "one China, with each side's own interpretation." This delicate ambiguity provided a framework that sustained cross-strait relations for two decades.

Sunflower and a New Generation's Taiwanese Identity

The Ma Ying-jeou era (2008–2016) saw the signing of 23 cross-strait agreements, including ECFA (Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement). In 2015, Ma and Xi Jinping shook hands in Singapore — the first meeting of leaders from both sides since 1949.

But the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement changed everything. Students occupied the Legislative Yuan for 23 days, opposing the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement. On the surface, the concern was economic openness; the deeper anxiety was whether Taiwan would lose its political autonomy through economic integration.

After Sunflower, a generational divide emerged in Taiwanese society's attitude toward cross-strait relations. Longitudinal polling by National Chengchi University's Election Study Center⁴ shows that the proportion of people identifying as "Taiwanese" rose steadily from 17.6% in 1992 to over 60% in the 2020s, while those identifying as "Chinese" fell below 3%. Those favoring "maintaining the status quo" have consistently been the largest group, but the definition of "status quo" shifts with each generation. For younger people, the status quo is that Taiwan is already a de facto independent country.

Pelosi Came, and Taiwanese Were Playing Basketball

On the evening of August 2, 2022, the plane carrying U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed at Taipei Songshan Airport. BBC Chinese journalist Lü Jiahong reported a scene that baffled international media: on the basketball court next to the airport, young people finished their game and left — no one lingered to wait for the arrival of one of the world's most powerful political figures.

"Who is Pelosi?" asked two of the reporter's friends in Taipei, both working in film and television and heavy internet users, who had never heard the name.

Beijing announced encircling military exercises around Taiwan, and missiles flew over the island's airspace for the first time. International media ran extensive coverage on whether war was imminent in the Taiwan Strait. In Taiwan, people went out for dinner, went shopping, and binged TV dramas as usual. Cheung Chai-ping, a cultural figure who had studied at a university in Guangzhou before moving to Taiwan, wrote on Facebook: "The Taiwan the world imagines and understands, and the Taiwan in which Taiwanese people actually live, are truly not the same place."

Some compared the Taiwanese reaction to that of South Koreans facing North Korean missiles: fear exists, but people have long since grown accustomed to it.

The real anxiety, however, showed up in the markets. The Taiwan stock market fell. TSMC Chairman Mark Liu gave a rare interview to CNN discussing war: "If China invades Taiwan, there will be no winners — everyone will be a loser."

After Pelosi's visit, Beijing's military pressure became routine. PLA aircraft crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait became daily news. In all of 2022, nearly 1,700 aircraft incursions were detected, far exceeding previous records. Numbers have remained high every year since. PLA Navy vessel activity in waters around Taiwan also increased substantially.

Behind these figures lies a fundamental shift: before 2022, the median line of the Taiwan Strait served as a tacit buffer zone for both sides; after, that line effectively ceased to exist.

A Structural Deadlock

Seven decades of Taiwan Strait crisis history reveal a recurring logic chain: one side takes an action the other perceives as changing the status quo; the other responds with a military display; the United States intervenes to restore balance; and all sides step back from the brink of full-scale war. This was true in 1954, in 1958, in 1996, and broadly in 2022 as well.

But the conditions sustaining this cycle are changing. In 1996, the United States could send two carrier battle groups and make Beijing back down; today, the PLA's anti-access/area-denial capabilities mean American carriers can no longer approach the Taiwan Strait with impunity. Taiwan's economic dependence on the mainland has declined from its peak during the Ma era, but the world's dependence on Taiwan's semiconductors has reached an all-time high. The "silicon shield" has become Taiwan's newest security buffer.

Cross-strait people-to-people exchanges have partially resumed after the pandemic, but trust continues to erode. The NCCU polling data tells the whole story: Taiwanese identity keeps rising, support for unification keeps falling, and Beijing's resolve for unification has never wavered. These are parallel curves that no negotiation can reconcile.

When Xi Jinping publicly proposed the "One Country, Two Systems Taiwan Plan" in 2019, the response from the Taiwanese public was an almost unanimous rejection. The timing of the Hong Kong anti-extradition movement reduced the proposal's persuasiveness to its lowest point.

The Granite Tunnels of Kinmen

Kinmen Island has more than 130 kilometers of underground tunnels. During the 823 Artillery War, residents sheltered from shelling inside them, gave birth to babies, and held weddings. After military administration ended, the tunnels became tourist attractions. Guides lead visitors from Taiwan proper and from mainland China through the spaces where ammunition was once stored, past slogans carved into the walls.

After the "mini three links" opened in 2001, Kinmen residents could take a ferry to Xiamen. There they drank coffee, shopped for daily necessities, and did business. Some Kinmen residents had relatives on the side from which the shells had come. The nearest point on the Xiamen coast is only 2.1 kilometers from Kinmen. On a clear day, you can see the high-rises on the other side with the naked eye.

In August 2022, when the PLA conducted missile-launch exercises around Taiwan, several missiles fell within Japan's exclusive economic zone. Daily life on Kinmen showed no obvious change. The wind lion gods still stood guard at intersections, and duty-free shops continued to operate as usual. Over seventy years, Kinmen's people have understood what war looks like more clearly than anyone — and they have also become more skilled than anyone at living under threat.

The shrapnel fragments from those granite tunnels were later collected by Kinmen's blacksmiths and forged into kitchen knives. "Kinmen knives" became a famous tourist product — high-quality steel, said to be sharper and more durable than ordinary kitchen knives. Shells became tools for cutting vegetables.

Further Reading:

• 造山者：世紀的賭注 — Hsiao Chü-chen's 2025 documentary, five years of interviews with 80+ semiconductor pioneers, visiting Purdue, Wisconsin, and Michigan — three CHIPS Act investment hubs — in 2026

• 台灣國防與軍事現代化 — From the porcupine strategy to M1A2T tanks, the fundamental transformation of Taiwan's defense logic after three Taiwan Strait crises

• 台灣邦交國與國際外交 — Another front beyond military confrontation: how Taiwan searches for a place in the international system

• 2026 鄭習會：國共領導人十年再會的十分鐘 — The latest chapter in seven decades of cross-strait interaction: the ten minutes when the KMT chairman met Xi Jinping in Beijing

• 鄧麗君 — Another battlefield of Cold War soft power: her voice penetrating the mainland, wearing an "Oppose Military Rule" badge at Happy Valley in 1989, broadcasting to the mainland from Mashan Observation Post in 1991

• 臺灣前途決議文 — The 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis accelerated the DPP's pragmatic transformation, and three years later gave birth to this document that defined Taiwan's cross-strait position for twenty-seven years

References