Taiwan Strait Crises and Cross-Strait Relations
Missiles on the Eve of the Election
March 8, 1996. Two weeks before Taiwan's first direct presidential election. That morning, the People's Liberation Army fired East Wind-15 ballistic missiles into waters 29 kilometers off Keelung and 37 kilometers off Kaohsiung. More than seventy percent of Taiwan's commercial shipping passed through these two ports, and the shipping lanes were instantly disrupted.
The Taipei stock market plunged. Lines formed at Taoyuan Airport as people scrambled for tickets out. Wealthy individuals moved assets offshore. Television news ran missile test footage on a loop.
But two weeks later, on March 23, 76% of Taiwan's eligible voters walked to the polls. Lee Teng-hui won with 54% of the vote — a full five percentage points higher than pre-missile-crisis polls. The missiles didn't scare voters away. They helped him win.
This was the most ironic moment in seventy years of cross-strait relations: military coercion produced exactly the result the coercing party least wanted.
One Thousand Men Holding a Gateway
Four decades earlier. At seven in the morning on January 18, 1955, on a small island called Yijiangshan off the coast of Zhejiang, Colonel Wang Sheng-ming was preparing to face the last day of his life.
The PLA committed 4,000 to 5,000 troops, 186 naval vessels, and more than 180 aircraft against this island. The defenders numbered only 1,030 — six assault battalions of the Anti-Communist National Salvation Army. The force ratio was roughly one to four. When Peng Dehuai laid out the battle plan, he said: "People say don't use a butcher's knife to kill a chicken, but this time we're using the cattle knife to slaughter the chicken." This was the PLA's first-ever joint land-sea-air operation; Beijing could not afford to lose.
The battle lasted less than two days. By 2 a.m. on January 19, the island had changed hands. Wang Sheng-ming was killed in action; his deputy, Wang Fu-bi, was taken prisoner. PLA sources claimed 393 killed and 1,027 wounded on their side. The ROC military reported 720 killed among the defenders.
Yijiangshan Island was tiny, but it was the gateway to Dachen Island. After losing Yijiangshan, Chiang Kai-shek decided to abandon the entire Taizhou Archipelago. In February 1955, under the escort of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, all military and civilian personnel were evacuated from Dachen Island. Chiang Ching-kuo was dispatched to communicate with the residents and accompanied them out together. Three days later, the PLA occupied all the islands off the eastern Zhejiang coast.
The impact of this small battle far exceeded what anyone predicted. It directly gave birth to the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of China in December 1954, formalizing the U.S.-Taiwan military alliance. At the same time, the nuclear threats America issued during the crisis convinced Beijing to commit to developing its own nuclear weapons. The fall of a one-thousand-man island unexpectedly reshaped the entire strategic landscape of East Asia.
Forty-Four Days, 470,000 Artillery Shells
August 23, 1958. Summer on Kinmen suddenly became hell.
That afternoon, 569 PLA artillery pieces opened fire simultaneously. Kinmen Island spans approximately 150 square kilometers in total; over the following forty-four days, it absorbed more than 470,000 artillery shells — one of the highest recorded densities of artillery bombardment per unit area in military history.
The first day of the bombardment was catastrophic. Three deputy commanders of the ROC Kinmen Defense Command were all killed: Ji Xing-wen, Zhao Jia-xiang, and Zhang Jie. Defense Commander Hu Lien and visiting Defense Minister Yu Da-wei were both wounded by shrapnel. Ji Xing-wen was the legendary soldier who fired the first shot of resistance against Japan at the Marco Polo Bridge — he died beside a dining table on Kinmen.
Life for Kinmen's residents was utterly transformed. Of the island's 9,053 structures, all were destroyed or heavily damaged; 618 military and civilians were killed and 2,610 injured. Residents were forced to move into underground tunnels. Kinmen entered a thirty-six-year period of wartime administration (1956–1992): military control over the entire island regulated residents' daily movement, communications, and economic activities. There was a nighttime curfew; fishermen needed permits to go to sea; mail was subject to censorship.
The aerial battles during the artillery war were equally fierce. The United States provided the ROC Air Force with the then-state-of-the-art Sidewinder missiles, creating air superiority. The U.S. Seventh Fleet helped break the naval blockade and maintain supply lines.
On October 6, Beijing issued a "Message to Compatriots in Taiwan" in the name of Defense Minister Peng Dehuai, announcing a one-week ceasefire on "humanitarian grounds." This was then modified to "shell on odd days, cease on even days" — a bombardment on odd-numbered calendar days, a halt on even-numbered ones. This absurd rhythm continued until January 1, 1979, the day the United States and the People's Republic of China established diplomatic relations, when Beijing formally announced it would cease the bombardment.
The peculiarity of the 823 Artillery Bombardment lay in the fact that, from the beginning, its goal was never to occupy Kinmen. Mao Zedong wanted to test America's resolve to defend Taiwan's offshore islands, and to demonstrate to the international community Beijing's position on "liberating Taiwan." The shells were political signals; the homes of Kinmen's people were the price.
A BBC Chinese report once cited a widely circulated view: after this artillery war ended, a military reconquest of the mainland became virtually impossible, and the Taiwan government turned toward pursuing democracy and freedom. In this sense, 823 was a "Battle for Taiwan's Defense." The long peace that followed across the strait maintained the de facto division of the two sides, which in turn made the subsequent economic miracle and democratization possible.
A President Stranded Overnight on a Plane in Hawaii
The seeds of the 1996 missile crisis were actually planted in 1994.
That year, Lee Teng-hui was returning from a South American trip and his plane stopped in Honolulu, Hawaii to refuel. He applied to the U.S. government for an entry visa and was refused. The Clinton administration would not permit him to leave the military airbase where he had landed; he was forced to sleep on his own plane for a night. A State Department official privately acknowledged the situation was "embarrassing." Lee Teng-hui later complained that he had been "treated like a second-class leader."
This humiliation set off a chain reaction in Washington. Pro-Taiwan legislators began working the phones; lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates intervened to push the issue. In May 1995, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution by 396 to 0, and the Senate by 97 to 1, calling on the State Department to allow Lee Teng-hui to visit the United States. The State Department relented.
On June 9 and 10, 1995, Lee Teng-hui returned to his alma mater Cornell University as an alumnus and delivered a lecture titled "Taiwan's Experience with Democracy." In that speech, he uttered the sentence that sent Beijing into fury: "Taiwan is a country with independent sovereignty." Beijing's response was four characters of classical Chinese: "This cannot be tolerated."
In July, Xinhua announced that the PLA would conduct missile tests. But through a secret back channel, Beijing sent a message to Lee Teng-hui's national policy adviser Tseng Yung-hsien: "Our ballistic missiles will be fired in Taiwan's direction in a few weeks, but you don't need to worry." Tseng Yung-hsien had met Yang Shangkun as Lee Teng-hui's secret envoy in 1992. This back channel let both sides know where the red lines were.
Beginning July 21, 1995, the Second Artillery Corps fired six East Wind-15 missiles into waters thirty-six miles north of Taiwan. From August through November 1995, the East Sea Fleet conducted exercises with fifty-nine warships and 192 air sorties.
In early 1996, as Taiwan's first direct presidential election approached, Beijing escalated. From January through February, 100,000 troops massed along the Taiwan Strait coast. The March 8 missile launches were aimed directly at waters off Keelung and Kaohsiung. America's response was to dispatch two carrier battle groups, the USS Independence and the USS Nimitz — 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 took away was that the gap between its own military capabilities and those of the United States was too large. Jiang Zemin ordered the PLA to begin a decade-long modernization program.
An Uninhabited Island in the Middle of the Cold War
Between the Second and Third Taiwan Strait Crises lay more than thirty years of Cold War standoff.
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 them with Taipei. Taiwan became increasingly isolated internationally, yet on the island itself, the economy took off at a remarkable pace and Taiwan became one of the Four Asian Tigers. These thirty years saw the two sides completely sealed off from each other politically, with civilian cultural ties sustained only by memory.
In 1987, Taiwan lifted martial law. That same year, veterans were allowed to return to the mainland to visit relatives. Some had left the mainland in their twenties; they returned as elderly men. Four decades of life had been cut in half by a strait.
In 1992, the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait met in Hong Kong and reached the ambiguous agreement later called the "1992 Consensus." Beijing's interpretation was "both sides insist on one China"; Taipei's interpretation was "one China, each with its own interpretation." This artfully vague space maintained a framework for cross-strait relations for twenty years.
The Sunflower Movement and a New Generation's Taiwanese Identity
The Ma Ying-jeou years from 2008 to 2016 saw the two sides sign twenty-three agreements, including ECFA (the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement). In 2015, Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping shook hands in Singapore — the first meeting between leaders of the two sides since 1949.
But the 2014 Sunflower Movement changed everything. Students occupied the Legislative Yuan for twenty-three days, protesting the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement. On the surface it was concern about economic opening; at a deeper level, the anxiety was: will Taiwan lose its political autonomy through economic integration?
After the Sunflower Movement, Taiwanese society's attitude toward cross-strait relations showed a generational split. Long-term polling by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University shows that those who identify as "Taiwanese" has risen continuously from 17.6% in 1992 to more than 60% in the 2020s, while those who identify as "Chinese" has dropped below 3%. Those who favor "maintaining the status quo" have consistently been the largest group, but the definition of "status quo" changes by generation. For young people, the status quo is that Taiwan is already a de facto independent state.
Pelosi Came; Taiwanese Were Playing Basketball
On the evening of August 2, 2022, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plane landed at Taipei's Songshan Airport. BBC Chinese journalist Lu Chia-hung reported a scene from the scene that confused international media: on the basketball court next to the airport, young people finished their game and left. No one stood around to witness the arrival of the world's most powerful woman politician.
"Who is Pelosi?" Two of the reporter's Taipei friends — both working in the entertainment industry, both heavy internet users — had never heard the name.
Beijing announced military exercises encircling Taiwan; missiles flew over Taiwan's main island for the first time. International media ran extensive coverage on whether war in the Taiwan Strait was imminent. In Taiwan, people went out to dinner, went shopping, and watched their streaming shows as usual. Culture writer Zhang Jie-ping, who studied in Guangzhou before moving to Taiwan, wrote on Facebook: "The Taiwan that the world imagines and tries to understand, and the Taiwan that Taiwanese people actually live in, are truly completely different places."
Some compared Taiwan's reaction to that of South Koreans toward North Korean missiles: fear is present, but they've long since grown accustomed to it.
The real anxiety, however, appeared in markets. Taiwan's stock market fell. TSMC Chairman Mark Liu made a rare appearance on CNN to discuss war: "If China invades Taiwan, there will be no winners — everyone will lose."
After Pelosi's visit, Beijing's military pressure became routine. PLA aircraft crossing the Taiwan Strait median line became daily news. In all of 2022, approximately 1,700 PLA aircraft intrusions were detected — far exceeding any previous year's record. Military activity has remained at high levels every year since. Chinese naval vessel activities around Taiwan's surrounding waters have also increased substantially.
Behind these numbers lies a fundamental change: before 2022, the Taiwan Strait median line was a tacitly acknowledged buffer zone; after 2022, that line effectively ceased to exist.
A Structural Deadlock
Seventy years of Taiwan Strait crisis history follows a recurring logical chain: one side takes action the other views as changing the status quo; the other responds with military displays; the United States intervenes to restore balance; both sides step back from the brink of total war. So it was in 1954, in 1958, in 1996, and roughly so in 2022.
But the conditions sustaining this cycle are changing. In 1996, two U.S. carrier battle groups were enough to make Beijing back down; today the PLA's anti-access/area-denial capabilities mean U.S. carriers can no longer approach the Taiwan Strait so easily. 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 historical highs. The "silicon shield" has become Taiwan's newest security barrier.
Cross-strait civilian exchanges have partially resumed after the pandemic, but trust continues to erode. The NCCU polling data tells the full story: Taiwanese identity continues to rise, support for unification continues to fall, and Beijing's will to unify has never softened. These are parallel curves that cannot be bridged through negotiation.
When Xi Jinping publicly proposed the "one country, two systems Taiwan formula" in 2019, the response from Taiwanese society was nearly unanimous rejection. The timing of Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement had driven the proposal's persuasiveness to its lowest point.
Kinmen's Granite Tunnels
Kinmen Island has more than 130 kilometers of underground tunnels. During the 823 Artillery Bombardment, residents sheltered inside them, gave birth, and held weddings. After the wartime administration was lifted, the tunnels became tourist attractions. Tour guides lead visitors from Taiwan's main island and from mainland China through the places where artillery shells were once stored, past motivational slogans carved into the walls.
After the Small Three Links opened in 2001, Kinmen residents could take a boat to Xiamen. They have coffee there, do their shopping, and conduct business. Some Kinmen residents have relatives on the side where the shells once came from. The nearest Xiamen coastline from Kinmen is only 2.1 kilometers away. On a clear day, the tall buildings across the water are visible to the naked eye.
In August 2022, when the PLA fired missiles in exercises around Taiwan, several landed in Japan's exclusive economic zone. Daily life on Kinmen showed no obvious change. The stone lion Wind Lion Gods on the island still stood at their usual intersections; the duty-free shops operated as normal. For seventy years, the people of Kinmen have understood war more intimately than anyone else, and have become more skilled than anyone else at living with threat.
The shrapnel from those artillery shells in the granite tunnels was later taken by Kinmen's blacksmiths and forged into kitchen cleavers. "Kinmen cleavers" became a famous tourist product — good steel, said to be sharper and more durable than ordinary knives. Artillery shells turned into tools for cutting vegetables. This is probably the most precise metaphor for seventy years in the Taiwan Strait.
Further Reading:
- The Mountain Makers: A Century's Gamble — Xiao Ju-chen's 2025 documentary, five years of interviews with 80+ semiconductor pioneers, entering the CHIPS Act investment centers of Purdue, Wisconsin, and Michigan in 2026
- Taiwan's Defense and Military Modernization — From the porcupine strategy to the M1A2T tank, the fundamental transformation of Taiwan's defense logic after three Taiwan Strait crises
- Taiwan's Diplomatic Allies and International Relations — The other front beyond military confrontation: how Taiwan seeks its place in the international system
- The 2026 Cheng-Xi Meeting: Ten Minutes of KMT-CCP Leadership's Reunion After Ten Years — The latest chapter in seventy years of cross-strait interaction: the KMT chairman's ten minutes with Xi Jinping in Beijing
- Teresa Teng — Another battleground of Cold War soft power: her songs permeated the mainland; in 1989 she stood at Happy Valley with an "anti-martial law" sign; in 1991 she broadcast to the mainland from the Masan Observation Post
References
- BBC Chinese (2022). "Looking Back at Taiwan Strait Crises: From the Battle of Yijiangshan Island and the Kinmen Artillery Bombardment to the Missile Crisis." https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/trad/chinese-news-53834569
- BBC Chinese (2022). "Observations on Pelosi's Taiwan Visit: Why Aren't Taiwanese Worried as Cross-Strait Tensions Rise?" https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/trad/chinese-news-62402927
- Wikipedia. "Battle of Yijiangshan Island." https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/一江山島戰役
- Wikipedia. "Kinmen Artillery Bombardment." https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/金門砲戰
- Wikipedia. "Third Taiwan Strait Crisis." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis
- Election Study Center, National Chengchi University. "Trend Distribution of Taiwanese/Chinese Identity Among Taiwan Residents." https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7800&id=6960
- CommonWealth Magazine (2022). "Witness to the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis Chang Jung-feng: China's Exercises This Time Are 'Closest Yet.'" https://www.cw.com.tw/article/5122255
- CNN (2022). "TSMC Chairman Mark Liu Interview." https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/07/31/exp-731-taiwan-tech-mark-liu-tsmc.cnn
- Su Chi (2014). Twenty Years of Cross-Strait Turbulence: A Factual Record. Commonwealth Publishing. https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010831375
- Sankei Shimbun (2019). "Secret Records on Lee Teng-hui" series, on the Tseng Yung-hsien back channel and secret communications before the missile crisis.