ABSTRACT
Once carried to power in 1949, the communists were able to establish effective rule over the mainland of China and end the warfare that had torn the country apart since the first decades of the twentieth century. Chinese sovereignty was soon extended to the offshore islands and in 1950 forcibly to Tibet. Only Taiwan and a few other small islands remained outside the control of the new Chinese Republic. There, Chiang Kai-shek, vowing anew each year to continue the civil war, established a separate state by occupying the islands with his fleeing army. Taiwan (Formosa), together with the Pescadores and the tiny islands of Quemoy and Matsu, continue to represent the other China. However, the possibility of renewing the civil war has long ago vanished. The People’s Republic has ceased to be shunned by the West and its representative has taken his place as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Even the brutal suppression of the movement, largely of students and young people, crushed so bloodily in Tiananmen Square in 1989, isolated the Chinese communist leadership from the West for only a short time. Today China benefits from huge Japanese and Western investment.
