As Taiwan prepares to usher in a new president in May, mainland Chinese sailors this week threw flowers into the sea to mark a key but little-known victory against Nationalist forces, who fled to the island after a civil war defeat by the Communists in 1949.
China’s military periodically likes to remind Taiwan that it still considers the island one of its strategic priorities, and in September held three days of live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait.
It is deeply suspicious of Taiwanese president-elect Tsai Ing-wen, whose Democratic Progressive Party espouses formal independence for the self-ruled island. Tsai, who takes office in May, has pledged to maintain peace with Beijing.
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The naval ship Dabieshan carried out a solemn ceremony to remember the martyrs who gloriously sacrificed themselves in the battle for the Yijiangshan Islands
After 1949, the Nationalists retained control of several small island groups along the coast of eastern China, from where they launched guerrilla raids into mainland China and harassed Chinese shipping.
While most were later abandoned as being too distant to protect from Taiwan, some were taken by force by the Communists, including the Yijiangshan Islands, which fell in 1955 in a crucial psychological defeat for the Nationalists.
In a statement late on Monday, China’s Defence Ministry showed pictures of sailors throwing flowers into the sea near the islands and bowing their heads in memory on the deck of a warship, ahead of next week’s traditional tomb-sweeping holiday.
“The naval ship Dabieshan carried out a solemn ceremony to remember the martyrs who gloriously sacrificed themselves in the battle for the Yijiangshan Islands,” the ministry said.