Why China is holding military drills around Taiwan — and the history behind it

BEIJING (AP) — China's decision to bring serious firepower to bear for military drills in the waters off Taiwan this week has deep roots — both in the past several weeks and the past several decades.

The island is the most sensitive political subject for China. It has been ever since Taiwan split from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war. Today, though the island governs itself, China claims it as sovereign territory.

China has often held military drills around Taiwan, both around what it considers specific provocations and in general. Here's a look at the context around the latest drills.

How Taiwan came to be governed separately

China was ruled by the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, from 1927 to 1949. When civil war broke out, and Mao Zedong’s communists overthrew the Nationalists, they fled to Taiwan, off the coast of southern China.

There, they set up a government, and it evolved into a multiparty democracy that has ruled the island ever since. But the government in Beijing considers it sovereign territory and says it reserves the right to take over if it wishes. Talk of eventual reunification is frequent and fervent.

In the meantime, Taiwan grows more diplomatically isolated with each passing year. The United States stopped recognizing it when Washington and Beijing established relations in 1979, though the U.S. remains obligated to help Taiwan defend itself.

And other nations, under pressure from the Chinese government, have switched allegiances as well. Today, just 11 of the 193 member states of the United Nations — and the Holy See at the Vatican — have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Why Taiwan is so important to China

It's a matter of pride and a matter of strategy.

First, strategy: China has struggled for centuries to maintain control and sovereignty at its edges; that's why the Great Wall was built in the first place centuries ago — to fortify territory against incursions from nomads. It's no coincidence, then, that the modern government's biggest security concerns are typically Taiwan and Hong Kong off its southeastern edge and Xinjiang and Tibet in its distant west.

In Taiwan's case, China's longtime tension with Japan helps fuel this cautiousness, as does uncertainty about exactly how the United States would respond if the island came under direct threat.

Second, pride: Sovereignty and dignity are fundamental pillars of China's self-built political image. The government brooks no international interference in what it considers internal affairs — and that includes Taiwan.

That means any notion, even in passing, that Taiwan is its own nation is expressly forbidden — even when it comes to maps and graphics (China often bristles when they refer to Taiwan as a “country”) and Taiwan's Olympic team (which is allowed to compete only using the name “Chinese Taipei").

Why China would want to hold drills

right now

Two main reasons: Japan and the United States.

Last month, Japan's prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said she wouldn't rule out military intervention if neighboring Taiwan came under direct threat from China. “If it involves the use of warships and military actions, it could by all means become a survival-threatening situation,” Takaichi said.

Her comments were stronger than those of her predecessors and drew a sharp rebuke from Beijing.

Such remarks are particularly sensitive in light of China and Japan's history. There remains widespread anger and suspicion in China about Japan and its motives, sown generations ago when imperial Japan — which had already colonized Taiwan in 1895 — brutally took over parts of China in the years before World War II. Deep scars of that time remain in the collective Chinese psyche, with outrage often whipped up by state-controlled traditional and social media.

Then, last week, U.S. President Donald Trump's State Department announced it would sell a massive package of arms valued at more than $10 billion to Taiwan — including medium-range missiles, howitzers and drones. If it's approved by Congress, which seems likely, it would be the largest-ever U.S. weapons package to Taiwan, exceeding the $8.4 billion in U.S. arms sales to the island under President Joe Biden.

China said the move would harm its sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.

“This cannot save the doomed fate of ‘Taiwan independence’ but will only accelerate the push of the Taiwan Strait toward a dangerous situation of military confrontation and war," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun. “Using Taiwan to contain China will not succeed.”

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Ted Anthony has been writing about China for The Associated Press since 1994 and was AP's China news editor from 2002 to 2004.