On Monday, Taiwan's Defense Minister Tang Fei announced Taiwanese plans to build a Missile Shield to combat any missile attack initiated by the People's Republic of China (PRC). This is the latest in a series of statements and events that show the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China rapidly deteriorating in the last two months; the state of hostility is equivalent to that of March 1996 when China fired ICBMs into the Taiwanese straits in an attempt to intimidate Taiwan during a presidential election. At the epicenter of the crisis is an historic statement made by Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-hui, in an interview last month with German Radio. At that time, Lee announced Taiwan was abandoning the fiction of the "one China" policy, which for the last 40 years had allowed each country to declare its government China's legitimate government with an eventual (and inevitable) reunification taking place under its own system. Instead, Lee stated that relations with communist China would now take place on a "state-to-state" basis. The PRC has taken this statement as a virtual declaration of independence and begun provocative military maneuvers in the Taiwanese straits, thus helping to touch off the recent escalation in nuclear rhetoric. For its part, the US continues to support the "one China" policy while simultaneously warning communist China against military aggression.