Record number of Chinese fighter jets and warships encircling the island democracy.

China said these exercises were punishment for Taiwanese independence forces, and a direct response to this speech by Taiwan's president during National Day celebration.

It was the second round of Chinese military drills in 2024 around Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its sacred territory.

Although Taiwan has governed itself for more than 70 years, few nations recognise it as the sovereign state.

China calls Lai a dangerous separatist.

And since he's entered office, cross-strait tensions have reached new heights.

And Chinese intimidation has extended beyond just military means.

We've seen a ratcheting up of pressure, no doubt, from Beijing, trying to make clear that the ultimate goal of unifying Taiwan with China is very much still the priority of Beijing.

Poor to this conflict is a question about identity, about being Taiwanese.

But why is that threatening to China?

And could it lead Beijing to take even more dramatic steps?

In June this year, China sent a chill through Taiwan.

Beijing announced a new interpretation to laws against separatists they believe are trying to split Taiwan from China.

The maximum penalty for these crimes?

Death.

In September, activist Yang Zhiyuan became the first Taiwanese person to be convicted under this new interpretation.

A court in eastern China sentenced him to nine years in prison on charges of succession.

This is Maggie Lewis.

She's a professor of Chinese law at Seton Hall University in the US.

He had very limited procedural rights, did not have access to a lawyer or other sort of standard rights of the accused.

And moreover, his ultimate trial and sentencing was done behind closed doors.

Yang is one of more than 800 Taiwanese people who have been detained or simply disappeared in China over the last 10 years.

Some face separatist or other charges.

That's according to Amnesty International.

According to Beijing, offenses punishable by death include advocating for Taiwan to be a member of international organizations that only sovereign countries can join.

There's going to be a lot of guesswork here and everything's fine until it's not.

And we don't know what will happen.

Lai Ching-de has said nearly all of Taiwan's population could be subject to prosecution.

That's unless they're willing to accept Chinese Communist Party rule over Taiwan.

But what exactly is this dispute about?

To answer that, we need some history.

For the first half of the 20th century, Taiwan was a Japanese colony.

When Japan lost World War II, it ceded Taiwan to the Republic of China under the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT.

But when the KMT lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the party fled to Taiwan.

In Taipei, they established a temporary capital for the Republic of China, or ROC, which remains Taiwan's official name to this day.

The victors of that civil war, the Chinese Communist Party, established the People's Republic of China on the mainland that year.

When the KMT arrived in Taiwan, they were concerned the people living there were not Chinese enough.

So they enforced draconian policies to re-educate them on how to be what they considered properly Chinese.

The KMT declared martial law in 1949, and for decades, governed Taiwan as an authoritarian state.

This is Chen Cui-lien, she's a professor of Taiwanese history at National Taiwan University.

Initially, China's seat in the United Nations was represented by Taipei as the Republic of China.

But that changed in 1971, with Resolution 2758, which said that the People's Republic of China in Beijing was the only legitimate representative of China.

Many countries then switched diplomatic recognition of China from Taipei to Beijing.

Most significantly, the United States did in 1979.

And that had a big impact on how people in Taiwan saw themselves.

After the US switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing, it didn't completely break ties with Taiwan.

US lawmakers passed the Taiwan Relations Act to define the new unofficial relationship with Taipei.

The act says that the US must provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself if threatened militarily.

It also encouraged Taiwan to take steps toward democratization.

Martial law was eventually lifted in Taiwan in 1987, driven by a growing sense of Taiwanese identity separate from China.

That allowed more open discussion of the more oppressive episodes of KMT rule, including the 228 Incident in 1947, in which thousands of local Taiwanese were killed.

In 1996, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election.

And since then, democracy itself has become a central part of Taiwanese people's identity.

Today, more than 60% of Taiwan's population view themselves as solely Taiwanese.

As a democracy, power has alternated between Taiwan's two main political parties, the KMT and the now-governing Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP.

And relations with China continue to dominate elections.

Both main parties say they want to preserve Taiwan's ambiguous status quo, but look to achieve that by different means.

The KMT, once staunchly anti-communist, now favours closer ties with Beijing.

Whereas the DPP is wary of Chinese influence and advocates keeping Beijing at arm's length.

So why is the conflict getting worse now?

Let's outline the key players.

First, we've got Lai Ching-de.

He's Taiwan's current president.

Lai comes from the ruling DPP, the Taiwanese party Beijing views as separatist.

His win in the 2024 election marked the first time any party in Taiwan's democratic history has won at three successive elections.

The DPP under Lai says that Taiwan is already a sovereign country, and so doesn't need to declare formal independence, a red line for Beijing.

Then there's Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.

He believes Taiwan is a province of China, and has no right to call itself an independent country.

He's described reunifying Taiwan with China as one of Beijing's core goals, one that he's suggested he hopes to achieve while leader.

For many in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, and the Philippines, the DPP has been the offers a troubling vision for their own future.

Beijing has pointed to their one country, two systems model in Hong Kong as an example of how to reunify Taiwan with the mainland.

But the suppression of protests in Hong Kong means most Taiwanese don't have faith their autonomy would be preserved under Beijing's rule.

If a political solution fails, Xi has reserved the right to use military force.

But the Chinese leader says any military action would only be directed at a minority of Taiwan's population.

Few people in Taiwan would identify as a separatist, but Xi's definition would apply to much more than a minority.

More than 80% of Taiwanese want to maintain some form of the status quo, in which Taiwan's people can decide their future.

But that status quo would still fall foul of Beijing's red lines.

Chen Yujie is an assistant research professor at Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

That's why the problem has become so intractable.

China says reunifying Taiwan is inevitable, but more and more Taiwanese people have a political identity that Beijing is unwilling to accept.

This is Wen-Ti Song.

He's a non-resident fellow of the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub.

For the rest of the world, a conflict over Taiwan would have an enormous impact.

If China invades Taiwan, it could take control of the global semiconductor industry.

Beijing could also project power around the region, emboldening China to take stronger action in territorial disputes with other countries, like with the Philippines in the Many U.S. officials believe it would also bring an end to American dominance of the Indo-Pacific, gravely threatening the future of democracy in Asia.

But for Taiwanese themselves, a Chinese invasion would alter every aspect of their lives.

Once Taiwan is absorbed and annexed to the PRC, democracy can no longer exist.

So the world will lose a democratic stronghold in Asia.

Great loss for democratic countries would be losing a like-minded partner who share the same values of protecting human rights and democracy.

That also happens to have a great strategic and economic interest to this democratic alliance.

So how do Taiwanese parties hope tensions can be eased?

We've heard from the ruling DPP, but for Taiwan's main opposition, the KMT, more communication is key.

The last president from the KMT, Ma Ying-jeou, has said that Taiwan shouldn't raise its defence budget because it could provoke China, even as Beijing ramps up military intimidation.

No matter how much you defend yourself, you can never fight a war with the mainland.

You can never win.

You can never win. We try to reduce the potential reason for conflict.

Instead of building up a military, just to wait for a potential conflict with the mainland.

But some experts believe even with this approach, China's threats to Taiwan won't disappear.

More than that, they say partisan debate in Taiwan about its identity could limit international support.

We do need a bipartisan support in Taiwan on this very important issue of Taiwan's sovereignty and separation from the PRC.

But we don't see that right now.

And that's dangerous.

An October 2024 poll suggested that the majority of Taiwanese don't believe that China will invade in the next five years.

That's despite some U.S. officials saying that China could attack by 2027.

I think we are likely to see more foreign theory coming out of Beijing, of course.

This is a dangerous time.

Taiwan is doing its best to escalate the tension without losing our own identity and sovereignty.

Modern Taiwanese identity is a product of its tumultuous history.

From colonial rule, to an authoritarian regime, and now a vibrant democracy.

What comes next?

Xi has said what he calls the Taiwan question shouldn't be passed down to the next generation.

But is there anything that Taiwan and the international community can do to stop him providing the answer?

Thank you very much.