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China/Taiwan - Background Major Events | Steps Towards Normalization | UN General Assembly Resolutions Major Events in China-Taiwan Relations: 1949: Gen. Chiang Kai-shek retreats to Taiwan with his Nationalist government after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's Communist forces. August 1958: China bombards the outlying Kinmen islands in a failed bid to seize the Taiwanese-controlled islands just off the mainland's southern coast. October 1971: China takes Taiwan's seat at the United Nations. 1975: Chiang Kai-Shek, who has ruled Taiwan as a dictator, dies. His son, Chang Ching-Kuo, succeeds him as president and continues his father's authoritarian government. 1976: Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai die. A new constitution is instituted making Hua Guofeng prime minister, but in the ensuing political jockeying, Deng Xiaoping emerges as the new patriarch. 1978: China signs treaty normalizing relations with United States. Washington officially recognizes China’s government. December 1988: Taiwan ends a ban on visits to China. April 1991: Taiwan ends the period of "suppressing the communist rebellion," paving the way for unofficial contacts. April 1993: Top envoys from Taiwan and China hold a watershed meeting in Singapore and agree to hold regular meetings to discuss practical issues. June 1995: Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui visits his alma mater, Cornell University, in the United States, and gives a political speech that angers China. March 1996: China test fires missiles near Taiwan's two biggest ports and holds war games in the Taiwan Strait to intimidate Taiwanese ahead of the island's first direct presidential election. September 1998: Top envoys from Taiwan and China meet in Beijing. July 1999: Taiwan declares that it should have "special state-to-state relations" with China -- a claim Beijing interprets as a step toward independence. China refuses to send its envoy to Taiwan for further talks. January 2003: Six Taiwanese airlines fly charter flights, with a stopover in Hong Kong, to Shanghai to take Taiwanese home for the Chinese New Year. January 2005: Taiwanese and Chinese airlines fly the first nonstop charter flights between the two sides for the Chinese New Year. Countries with diplomatic relations with Taiwan:
Following the end of World War II, Japan formally renounced all right, claim, and title to Formosa (Taiwan) in the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Treaty of Taipei. Both treaties, however, remained silent on who the island would be transferred to, in part to avoid taking sides in the ongoing Chinese Civil War. Advocates of Taiwan independence have used this omission to justify self-determination. During the 1960s and 1970s, the United Nations regarded the Republic of China government on Taiwan as the sole legitimate government of China until the 1970s, when most nations began switching recognition to the People's Republic of China. Each year since 1993, a constellation of UN member-states have requested inclusion of the question of Taiwan's political status as a supplementary item in the Agenda of the General Assembly. |
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