In August 2024, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te visited Kinmen Island and declared, “We are no longer trying to retake the mainland. But we are also unwilling to be ruled by the Communist Party.” The defiant speech commemorated the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958, when the PLA fired half a million shells at the island over the course of 44 days. But Lai’s visit also revealed an uncomfortable reality: Kinmen, located just 6 kilometers from China’s coast, is drifting away from Taiwan due to both economic gravity and neglect by Taipei. That constitutes an alarming development because during the decades of the Cold War, the island was the flashpoint that kept the issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty in international focus. 

The history is significant. In October 1949, the battered Nationalist army achieved its last major victory of the Chinese Civil War at the Battle of Guningtou, located along the Kinmen archipelago. It was the PLA’s only significant defeat during its advance across the countryside. That victory bought time for the ROC government to consolidate its position on Taiwan. After the Guningtou victory, Kinmen continued to bear the brunt of Beijing’s fury throughout the 1950s in its role as Taiwan’s early warning system, with tens of thousands of troops serving as the first line of defense. 

However, modern military technology has rendered Kinmen’s Cold War strategic position largely obsolete. Today, Chinese air and naval forces are operating increasingly close to Taiwan’s main island, continuously testing and gradually eroding informal boundaries. As recently as April 2024, a Chinese........

© The National Interest