CIA National Intelligence Estimates on the Cross-Strait and Sino-Russian Relations

... Cross-Strait Relations” (NIE 99-13 – September 1999) After the return of Hong Kong and Macao to the People's Republic of China, the United States is the only Western power capable of hindering Chinese territorial ambitions in the South China Sea (Taiwan). CIA reports in the 1990s, unlike those produced earlier by the CIA during the Cold War, attempted to determine whether Taiwan should remain an independent country backed up by Washington or follow the British and Portuguese examples of Hong Kong and Macao....