The Taiwan Strait that separates China and Taiwan continues to be a dangerous military and political conflict zone, which remains unsolved. Taiwan has never been a part of the People's Republic and the Taiwanese people have no desire to become a part of China. Despite this, China's leadership continues after 60 years with the People's Republic of China to claim Taiwan as one of China's lost territories which they aim to control and if necessary with military force. Today however, China recognizes that Taiwan will not become a province, but insists that Taiwan cannot declare itself independent.

The elements of this conflict contains historical entanglements with the civil war in China and the conflict is today complicated by the Chinese nationalism, Taiwan's democracy and a stronger Taiwanese identity. China has over the last 60 years changed strategies but maintained a military and political pressure against the island state. All these factors are important ingredients in understanding the possible conflict solutions. The last sections of this article will show the costs and benefits of various solutions to the conflict.

The historical luggage

After the Civil War, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan with over one million refugees and established the Republic of China in Taiwan. Before the establishment, the Taiwanese rebelled against the new regime in 1947. This revolt resulted in a crackdown by the Nationalist with direct killings of between 18,000 and 28,000 people. After the takeover, Taiwan was a dictatorship with martial law until 1987. Democracy was introduced in the early 1990s.

For a period of time China had to accept that the Nationalist Party with the dictator Chiang Kai-shek represented the entire China in the UN system from Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek never gave up the idea of recapturing China, and as a result of his stubbornness Taiwan was eventually thrown out of  the UN in 1971 and gradually became more and more isolated in the world community.

Taiwan has only been a Chinese province during the Qing dynasty in a decade from 1885-1895. Before 1885 Taiwan was to a high degree managed by Taiwanese landowners. China did not regard Taiwan as a part of China. This became evident in the end of the 1800s when China refused to have jurisdiction over Taiwan. It was a pressure from the West more than wholehearted love which made Taiwan into a province. Later, Taiwan was given to Japan in 1895 by the Shimonoseki Treaty and became a Japanese colony. Today, the Cairo Declaration of 1943 is widely used as evidence for China's claim to Taiwan after World War II. It is however wrong to use the declaration as evidence because the Cairo Declaration was nothing but an unsigned press-release and merely a political statement during the war. In addition, if we exam the details of the declaration  it states that Taiwan was given to the Republic of China (Taiwan's official name) and not to Mao Zedong communist China. Although the declaration was reaffirmed in the Potsdam Agreement, it can be argued that it did not come into force because this requires an international peace agreement. Since Japan later at the San Francisco Peace Accord in 1952 did not surrendered Taiwan to anyone, it could be argued that Taiwan's status is undetermined.