Book excerpt: First published in 1985, this book is about an important episode, and two of its sequels, in Beijing’s long struggle to achieve two goals, by force if necessary. First, to prevent the US from detaching Taiwan from China and establishing Taiwan as a universally recognized separate and independent country, as Russia and the Soviet Union were able to detach and establish Outer Mongolia; and second, to end the Chinese Civil War by bringing Taiwan under the rule of Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party.