https://taiwanstrait.com/tags/matsu/ Recent content in Matsu on Taiwan Strait Hugo en-us Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://taiwanstrait.com/kinmen-and-matsu-the-offshore-islands-that-taiwan-still-holds-three-miles-from-china/ Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://taiwanstrait.com/kinmen-and-matsu-the-offshore-islands-that-taiwan-still-holds-three-miles-from-china/ <p>Kinmen Island sits approximately 3.5 kilometers from the Chinese city of Xiamen. On a clear day, residents of Kinmen can see the skyline of a Chinese city of five million people across a strip of water narrower than the distance between Manhattan and Staten Island. Taiwan has administered Kinmen since 1949, when Nationalist forces successfully repelled a PLA amphibious assault that, if successful, might have changed the entire trajectory of the civil war&rsquo;s outcome. The island has been shelled, blockaded, and fought over. It is still Taiwanese. Its continued existence as a piece of Taiwanese territory three kilometers from the Chinese mainland is one of the more remarkable geopolitical facts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.</p>