An island tethered to Taiwan, but leaning toward China

LIEYU TOWNSHIP, Taiwan — Cold War detritus scars the white-sand beach on this island. Concrete barriers meant to halt invading tanks stand sentinel, waiting for the invasion that never came.

In the water, hundreds of rusting, sharpened steel barricades point menacingly toward the bustling Chinese city of Xiamen, whose skyscrapers poke through the midday haze just over three miles away.

The soldiers who manned these coastal defenses are long gone, though some have been replaced by life-size statues for the benefit of the many tourists who flock to the site. The most imminent danger now is to beachcombers who fail to pick up after their dogs. Signs warn they face a stiff fine: payable in new Taiwan dollars.

Lieyu Township, encompassing what is known as Lesser Kinmen Island, is not controlled by the People’s Republic of China, nor is the much larger Kinmen Island nearby, even though both sit on the approaches to one of the mainland’s busiest ports.

A statue now stands guard at a tourist attraction where real soldiers once defended Lieyu Island.CreditBilly H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

The People’s Liberation Army was never able to wrest control of the strategic islands from Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Republic of China who fled to Taiwan with his Nationalist forces in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists.

Chiang, who died in 1975, still watches over the island. A statue of him, doffing his peaked cap, towers over an overgrown athletic field where cows graze. The basketball court and chin-up bars once used by front-line soldiers are slowly surrendering to the lush subtropical vegetation.

Kinmen, also called Quemoy, was once a household name in America. The Nationalists and Communists engaged in huge artillery duels here in the 1950s, raising tensions among Washington, Beijing and Moscow as President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, vowed to defend Taiwan from attack.

A statue of Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to Taiwan with his Nationalist forces in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists, still watches over the island. CreditBilly H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

Now, China and Taiwan exchange volleys of fireworks during Chinese New Year.

These smaller islands are at a crossroads, borne out by the complicated interplay among the locals, the government in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, and the mainland.

In Taipei, a political party took power last month that is focused on the people of Taiwan, who are increasingly uncomfortable with the talk over seven decades affirming that Taiwan is part of China. A poll in February found that 73 percent of Taiwan people surveyed considered themselves Taiwanese, not Chinese, up from 44 percent two decades ago. Among young people, 85 percent called themselves Taiwanese.

In fact, neither Kinmen nor Matsu is geographically part of Taiwan. They are portions of China’s Fujian Province that the Communists never conquered. Their existence helps to make Taiwan the Republic of China, and people interviewed here, who have prospered as trade and tourism with China have blossomed, have deep ties to the mainland.

“Kinmen people have a very clear sense of their identity,” said Chou Yang-sun, a professor who focuses on mainland affairs at National Quemoy University in Kinmen. “They are Fujianese, but they are also part of the Republic of China, very different from most people in Taiwan, who support independence.”

One such resident is Zhou Ximei, who was born in Fujian in Ningde County, which from 1988 to 1990 was run by China’s current president, Xi Jinping. Ms. Zhou married a man from Kinmen, moved here two decades ago and now works in a museum set up in the Jiugong Tunnel, a grotto carved through solid rock to shelter people, boats and supplies during bombardments.

“When you say the Republic of China, there is the word ‘China’ in there as well,” said Ms. Zhou, speaking during a lull between boisterous groups of visitors touring the cave. “Chiang Kai-shek came to Taiwan from the mainland, too. I think a good leader needs to seriously ponder if he or she wants Taiwan’s economy to develop and its people to have stable lives.”

Kinmen County prospered as ties between China and Taiwan deepened. In 2001, passenger and trade traffic began between Kinmen and Xiamen. Seven years later, all of Taiwan opened up direct air, sea and postal links to the mainland. The population here boomed, surging to more than 133,000 this year from fewer than 80,000 a decade ago.

Tourists from the mainland arrive by boat in Kinmen’s port, and a much larger port is being built adjacent to it. A six-story shopping complex, catering to mainlanders and billed as Asia’s largest duty-free mall, opened in 2014.

On Taiwan, an hour’s flight away, there has been a different narrative. The economy is contracting, and voters who cast their ballots in January, wary that closer ties with China were draining the island of some good jobs and giving Beijing more influence, rejected the party that brought better ties with the mainland, Chiang’s own Kuomintang, or K.M.T. The newly inaugurated president, Tsai Ing-wen, leads a party swept into power partly because of concerns about China’s growing shadow over Taiwan.

In December, Ms. Tsai made a campaign stop in Kinmen, one of the few counties that her Democratic Progressive Party wound up losing, and pledged to pour more resources into developing the small islands. As the former head of the government agency that oversees ties with the mainland, she was one of the architects of the “mini three links” that in 2001 opened limited passenger, trade and mail connections between Kinmen and Xiamen, and she is not expected to alter the status quo that has given such a lift to the local economy.

Despite decades of being on the front lines, including an artillery bombardment that extended over two decades, people on Kinmen see the mainland not as a threat but as an opportunity.

On tiny Lieyu, closer ties with the mainland have also had economic consequences, as the massive garrison has dwindled, diminishing a ready market for the island’s shopkeepers.

Passengers aboard a ferry from Kinmen to Lieyu. CreditBilly H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

Soldiers, wearing camouflage uniforms and caps emblazoned with a white sun on a blue field, the national emblem of the Republic of China, mill about the small port where ferries run from Lieyu to the main island. But their small numbers, now in the hundreds, cannot make use of the extensive infrastructure built for the more than 10,000 troops based here decades ago.

Tsai Shu-ta, 59, who, along with his wife drives a taxi around the fewer than six square miles that make up Lieyu, recalls the heady days when the thousands of soldiers supported a movie theater, whose American-made projector is now on display at a local museum.

Mr. Tsai, who has lived his whole life on Lieyu, says he was put off by the Democratic Progressive Party’s failure to include Kinmen on its flag — which depicts a green island of Taiwan on a white cross.

He is proud to live in the Republic of China, recalling the propaganda slogans soldiers here broadcast to the Communist troops across the water. But he fears a future when people on Taiwan may formally move toward independence, which could imperil Kinmen because Beijing has said that would be grounds for war.

For now, the majority of Taiwanese agree with Mr. Tsai that it is best to maintain the status quo, the coexistence between the two sides that has kept the peace since the guns finally fell silent in the late 1970s.

If that should ever change, Mr. Tsai says, joking and with a chuckle, he has a plan:

“We’ll return to the mainland.”