Strategic importance of Jinmen islands.

There are numerous arguments as to whether Taiwan is a state or nation. While many arguments and theories had set their focus on Taiwan, most of the scholars and researchers had missed out a group of small frontier islands of Jinmen that separated Taiwan from the mainland. These frontier islands used to be the front line outpost of the Taiwanese military during the civil and cold war. An attempt to study these islands will be able to draw a clearer line on the state and nation-line building of the ROC citizens in Taiwan proper and Jinmen, as Jinmen has less trouble in defining who they are, and their state and nation-line are much more distinctive than the Taiwanese. These paper attempts to study the strategic importance of Jinmen in her role in post civil war Chinese politics as well as its military, political, social, economical influence from the mainland and Taiwan in the post cold war, using the state and nation-line of Jinmen as a guideline for the purpose of this study. By studying Jinmen, we will gain understanding on KMT’s Taiwan modern state building. The establishment of Jinmen nation-line remained unchanged since 1911, as they still claimed themselves as ‘part of China’, and is not affected by Taiwan’s pro-independence state building. This paper will further examine the nature of the Jinmen people, as Jinmen is a unique place with cultures similar to southern China but politically close to Taiwan. Their existence in the hands of ROC today was a result of both politically and military impaired by the people and their government. With Jinmen’s uniqueness of its definition of state and nation-line that cannot be found elsewhere in China, Jinmen can play a mediator role in the future social coherence and cultural understanding between the cross-straits, so as to help narrow the gap between them.Master of Arts (HSS