The Taiwan question is a civil war outcome that was never formalized. When Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949 following their defeat by Mao’s Communist forces on the mainland, neither side accepted the result as permanent. The People’s Republic of China, proclaimed by Mao on October 1, 1949, claimed sovereignty over all Chinese territory including Taiwan. The Republic of China government, relocated to Taipei, continued to claim sovereignty over the mainland and to represent China in the United Nations until its expulsion in 1971. Both governments maintained, for decades, that there was one China and that they were its legitimate government. The dispute was not about whether Taiwan was Chinese. It was about which government was China’s.

In March 1996, the People’s Liberation Army conducted missile tests that bracketed Taiwan, splashing ballistic missiles into the sea north and south of the island in a demonstration designed to intimidate Taiwanese voters ahead of the island’s first direct presidential election. The Clinton administration responded by deploying two carrier battle groups to the region — the USS Independence and the USS Nimitz — in the largest American naval deployment in Asia since the Vietnam War. China backed down. The crisis ended without direct military confrontation. Its consequences have structured the strategic competition in the strait for the thirty years since.