Tsai Ing-wen wins the presidency and the DPP takes a legislative majority for the first time. Beijing, which requires acceptance of the "1992 consensus" as a precondition, suspends official cross-strait communication channels.
Why it mattersThe suspension of dialogue is a structural feature of the current period rather than a passing rupture: for a decade the two governments have had no routine official channel, which removes the mechanism that would normally manage misunderstanding — and makes accidents more consequential than they would otherwise be.
Confidence: HighSources: Established historical record · Reuters — Taiwan and China coverageMethodologyCorrections