Taiwan News
Date: 2020/08/23
By:  Central News Agency

Brent Christensen, director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), on Sunday attended for the first time an annual ceremony that commemorates a battle in which Taiwan fended off an attempted invasion by China 62 years ago.

The memorial for the soldiers who were killed during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958 was held at Taiwushan Cemetery in the offshore Kinmen County, which was the frontline of Taiwan's battle against the Chinese communist forces in that era.

Christensen, the U.S.' top envoy to Taiwan, was the only foreign dignitary who attended the ceremony, at which President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) laid a wreath and bowed in homage to the soldiers who died in a battle known as the Artillery Bombardment of Kinmen.

On Aug. 23, 1958, nine years after the Republic of Taiwan (R.O.C.) government relocated from mainland China to Taiwan during a civil war, Chinese communist forces launched an attack on the R.O.C. military in Kinmen, which lies less than 10 kilometers off the southeast coast of China.    [FULL  STORY]