nottinghamuk the tense triangular relationship between the us china and taiwan has emerged once again amid escalating military tensions across the taiwan straitthe status of the small densely populated island off the southeast coast of the chinese mainland is hotly contested and there are almost daily news reports predicting that a newly assertive china may soon take action military or otherwise to forcibly reincorporate taiwan we have been here before though and to see such action as inevitable would be misguidedits a complex situation that has its roots in the chaos that followed the end of the second world war in asia and the civil war in china which ended with mao zedongs communist party founding the peoples republic on october 1 1949the island formerly known as formosa had been a japanese colony between 18951945 but was placed under the control of nationalist leader chiang kaisheks republic of china roc following japans defeatin 1949 chiang retreated to taiwan with around 2 million soldiers affiliates and civilian refugees planning to retake the mainland and overthrow the communists obviously this never happened and there has since followed a global competition between two competing conceptualisations of chinaduring the cold war this was often propagated by the roc and by western sources as red china versus free china but both spent much of the conflict as brutal and tyrannical dictatorships that encouraged cults of personality around their figurehead leaders so the notion of the people of taiwan as being free was debatable to say the leastneither the prc nor the roc acknowledge the others claim formal contact is limited and negotiations are usually done through proxies to ensure the upkeep of the pretence of the others lack of legal existencethe one china principle emerged soon after the rocs retreat to taiwan neither side could be seen to even accept the contestability of their claim to all china in case it damaged domestic and international prestigethe phrase one china was then popularised following its use in the 1972 shanghai communique between prc and us representatives and gained further notoriety following the 1992 consensus when unofficial representatives from beijing and taipei met in british hong kong and proclaimed their agreement that there was one china although interpretations over who ought to govern this realm clearly differedthe one china principle is one of the oddities of modern diplomacy it essentially requests that governments and major international organisations acknowledge that either the prc or the roc is the rightful sole government of all of china including taiwan and its outlying islandsareas of contestthere are three international arenas where one china is most apparent today one and perhaps most visible is in international sporting contests where taiwan usually competes as chinese taipei taiwan is not permitted to use the roc flag and its national anthem is not playedanother is membership of international organisations including the united nations un and its affiliates such as the world health organization who where china vetoes taiwans membership the