China's Hopes for Bridging the Taiwan Strait

More than six decades after Taiwan's estrangement from mainland China, the Taiwan Strait still represents the most physically formidable and symbolically inaccessible barrier to Beijing's objective of eventual reunification with the island. Over the course of its history, Taiwan switched hands from colonial occupiers including the Europeans and Japanese before becoming the prospective battleground between China and Taiwan in the second half of the 20th century. In recent years, military tensions between China and Taiwan have eased, and Beijing hopes that enhanced economic integration and the physical infrastructure it wants to build one day across the Taiwan Strait could bring the country a step closer to fulfilling a core geopolitical imperative by reuniting with the island.