Second Taiwan Strait Crisis
| Second Taiwan Strait Crisis | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Chinese Civil War and the Cold War | |||||||||
Taiwan Strait | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
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Republic of China United States | People's Republic of China | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Chiang Kai-shek Chiang Ching-kuo Hu Lien Ji Xingwen † Zhao Jiaxiang † Zhang Jie † Dwight D. Eisenhower Nathan Farragut Twining Wallace M. Beakley Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Roland N. Smoot |
Mao Zedong Peng Dehuai Ye Fei Xu Xiangqian | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
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92,000 Naval and air support | 215,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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| Second Taiwan Strait Crisis | |||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 八二三炮戰 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 八二三炮战 | ||||||||||
| Literal meaning | August 23 shelling war | ||||||||||
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| Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 金門炮戰 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 金门炮战 | ||||||||||
| Literal meaning | Kinmen shelling war | ||||||||||
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The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, also known as the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, was a conflict between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC). The PRC shelled the islands of Kinmen (Quemoy) and the Matsu Islands along the east coast of mainland China in an attempt to take them from the ROC, governed by the Kuomintang (KMT), and to probe the extent of American commitment to defend the Republic of China. The conflict also involved air, naval, and amphibious operations. Then U.S. secretary of state Christian Herter reportedly described it as the "first serious nuclear crisis".