The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

Just as the world was experiencing great political
changes at the turn of the 1990s, Taiwan made its
transition to democracy. The “engineer” of Taiwan’s
democratic change, President Lee Teng-hui, was also
pushing Taiwan toward de jure independence from
mainland China. (Since its separation from mainland
China in 1949 following China’s Civil War of 1946-49,
Taiwan has maintained a de facto independence.) Lee’s
move had alerted the mainland Chinese leaders who
maintain that Taiwan is part of China and promise to
keep it that way at all costs, including the use of force.
In March 1996, Taiwan held its first-ever direct presidential
election and the call for Taiwan independence
was a divisive issue in this election. In an attempt to
deter Taiwan’s pro-independence forces, China fired
missiles near Taiwan (landing in waters off the northern
and southern tips of the island).
The United States has been involved in the China-
Taiwan dispute since its beginning in 1949 and has
made commitments to the defense of Taiwan first
through the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954 (when the
United States held the ROC government in Taiwan
as the legitimate government for the entire country
of China) and then the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979
(when the United States switched diplomatic recognition
of China from Taipei to Beijing). In an effort to
prevent the Taiwan Strait crisis from escalating into
a large-scale military confrontation, the United States
sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the troubled
waters, staging the largest show of U.S. combat forces
in the Western Pacific since the end of World War II
and invoking for the first time two of the U.S. commitments
made in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of
1979. 34
The crisis faded away, yet the consequences continued
to impact U.S.-China relations. The most serious
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