From Taipei Times:
Almost every day, Taiwan is feeling the heat of China’s aggression: Beijing’s military threat and intimidation, more than 1,000 missiles aimed its way, constant attempts to isolate it internationally and a failure to accept Taiwan as a friendly neighbor.
What is China fighting against? What is driving China’s leaders in their obsession with Taiwan? When we go back in history, we see three main reasons.
One is the Chinese Civil War, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fought against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). This struggle was deeply ingrained in the minds of older leaders of the CCP, and still plays an important role in the thinking of the present leadership. But as the international power and influence of the KMT waned in the 1970s and 1980s, the old hostility was refocused on the new “threat”: Taiwan’s democracy. [Full Text]