Cross-strait relations & the Taiwan question
The legal, historical and diplomatic architecture of the Taiwan question and cross-strait relations for the Guokao international section.
The constitutional and historical baseline
The Taiwan question is, in Beijing's framing, the unfinished business of the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), after which the Kuomintang government relocated to Taipei in December 1949 while the Chinese Communist Party founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949. The PRC's position rests on the one-China principle: there is one China, Taiwan is part of China, and the PRC government is the sole legal government of China. This principle is codified domestically in the Preamble of the 1982 PRC Constitution, which calls Taiwan 'part of the sacred territory of the People's Republic of China,' and in the Anti-Secession Law of 14 March 2005, whose Article 8 authorises 'non-peaceful means' if Taiwan secedes, if a major incident entailing secession occurs, or if possibilities for peaceful reunification are exhausted.
The Cairo–Potsdam–San Francisco thread
Beijing anchors its sovereignty claim in wartime declarations. The Cairo Declaration of 1 December 1943 stated that territories Japan had 'stolen from the Chinese,' including Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores, should be restored to the Republic of China. The Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945 affirmed that Cairo's terms would be carried out, and Japan accepted them in its Instrument of Surrender of 2 September 1945. Beijing treats this chain as dispositive. Critics note the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 8 September 1951 had Japan renounce Taiwan without naming a recipient — the source of the 'undetermined status' argument that Beijing rejects outright.
The UN moment and diplomatic isolation
The decisive multilateral turn came with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 25 October 1971, which recognised the PRC's representatives as 'the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations' and expelled 'the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek.' Beijing reads 2758 as settling Taiwan's status in international law; Washington and Taipei argue it addressed only UN representation, not sovereignty. This interpretive gap is now a live contest, as Taiwan and the US push the reading that 2758 does not bar Taiwan's participation in UN bodies.
The PRC has steadily compressed Taipei's diplomatic space: the Republic of China maintained over 20 formal partners into the 2010s but, after switches by Panama (2017), the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati (2019), Nicaragua (2021) and Honduras (2023), held only about a dozen by the mid-2020s. The one-China principle is also the entry condition for diplomatic relations with Beijing — every state establishing ties must, at minimum, 'acknowledge' or 'recognise' the PRC position on Taiwan.