Taiwan Is China's Number 1 Security Issue

Reuters: South China Sea? For Beijing, Taiwan is the No. 1 security issue

For China, whose President Xi Jinping is already taking an increasingly muscular approach to claims in the East and South China Sea, the question of Taiwan trumps any other of its territorial assertions in terms of sensitivity and importance.

After eight years of calm in what had been one of Asia's powder kegs, the landslide election of an independence-leaning opposition leader, President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, has thrust Taiwan back into the spotlight as one of the region's most sensitive security issues.

Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. China claims Taiwan as its sacred territory, is estimated by Taiwan to aim hundreds of missiles at the island over a narrow stretch of water and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control.

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WNU Editor: Taiwan has always been on the top of the list as a security issue for China for as long as I can remember. But with the election of a pro-independence candidate in Taiwan's Presidential vote .... Taiwan Elects A Pro-Independence Candidate For President .... expect an increase in the war of words from China in the coming months .... Taiwan must abandon 'hallucination' of independence, warn Chinese media (The Guardian/Reuters).

Update: Analysis: New Taiwan President Faces China Challenge (Wendell Minnick, Defense News).