Taiwan’s peculiar status has been the focus of renewed attention recently. The policy of “strategic ambiguity” has been strained, as American officials have increasingly ignored long-standing norms related to their defense of the island, while PRC officials have maintained rhetoric about reunification and people on Taiwan — in both government and civilian circles — have debated the question of independence at greater volume than ever.
By way of explanation — if there is one — of how this island came to awkwardly exist as both a part of and apart from China, a few sentences are offered about the Chinese Civil War and how the all-but-defeat of the Nationalists (the KMT or Kuomintang) left Chiang Kai-shek seeking refuge about 100 miles off the southeast coast. (We’ll set aside for now Taiwan’s own history, including its entanglements with the Dutch, and its colonization by Japan following the Sino-Japanese War in 1895).
This narrative rarely goes into any depth about why or how it was that the Chinese Communists did not complete their elimination of the Nationalists by taking Taiwan. One big part of that explanation took place in the last days of October, 1949, weeks after Mao had proclaimed the People’s Republic from his rostrum atop Tiananmen. Variously called the Battle of Kinmen (after the island also romanized as Jinmen or Quemoy) or the Battle of Guningtou (after one of the island’s main villages), the clash between Nationalist and Communist forces off the Chinese mainland coast stemmed the tide of the PLA advance toward Taiwan and, as it happened, laid the foundation for decades of East Asian geopolitics. For readers with facility in French, historian Stephane Malsagne’s new book, La Bataille de Kinmen, provides a definitive new account of the events of that October. Most of this account derives from Malsagne’s book.
Communist leaders, including those directing the People’s Liberation Army, were aware that their enemy was on the run, and that delay would likely make eliminating the Nationalists entirely more difficult. The coastline of Fujian province, including the city of Xiamen, was among the last cities to fall to the PLA, which it did in early October. The capture of Xiamen was much easier than expected, and left the PLA positioned to advance toward Taiwan, the next step being the island of Jinmen, just 10 miles across the water and within view of Xiamen.
The easy capture of Xiamen was a continuation of a pattern that must have seemed inevitable to PLA commanders by this point in the civil war. For years, Communist forces had enjoyed victory after victory, driving the Nationalist government out of the mainland. The few remaining KMT armies were surely no match for the PLA forces
