President Tsai Ing-wen was full of gratitude on Wednesday towards the fallen soldiers who warded off Chinese Communist forces 65 years back in a frontline island fight, attributing their success for leading Taiwan on “the way of democracy and liberty”. Her visit to Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen island – discovered just a few miles from China – comes as rapports between Taipei and Beijing have crashed in past years.
Laying a garland to commemorate the soldiers who lost their lives during the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, Ms Tsai recalled how the servicemen and civilians “opposed with one heart and carried on in fighting off the enemy forces who attempted to invade”. War started on August 23, 1958, when Chinese forces conducted a passionate assaulting of Taiwan’s edging Kinmen and Matsu islands in a bid to eradicate the Nationalists – who ran away from the mainland after the end of the Chinese Civil War.
Then-US president Dwight Eisenhower commanded reinforcements to give their Taiwanese friends, and not capable of to taking the islands or shell the Nationalists into submission, Beijing declared a ceasefire. “They secured our homeland and also granted us a chance to lead towards the way of democracy and liberation ,” Ms Tsai said in a brief speech.