When Huang Xu was a young soldier in an artillery unit on the Chinese coast in the late 1980s, war with Taiwan always seemed imminent.
“We were on alert level one every day, and drilling for Taiwan (contingencies) all the time,” said the driver in the booming coastal city of Xiamen just a few miles away from the self-ruled island.
Today, the dynamic across the Taiwan Strait has changed. Trade between democratic Taiwan and Beijing, which claims sovereignty over it, has blossomed and the two economies are increasingly intertwined….[Full Text]
–Photo source: Military recruits watch over rows of guns after regular training at an army base on the outskirts of Shenyang, northeast China’s Liaoning Province. (Stringer/Reuters)