(Reuters) -Taiwan is closely monitoring whether China will include the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands in a new five-year economic plan under discussion this week in Beijing.

Here are some facts about Taiwan’s offshore islands:

– When the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists, it retained control of several islands and islets along China’s eastern and southern coasts. Most were later captured by Chinese forces or evacuated by Taiwan as they were too difficult to defend.

Today, Taiwan only holds the Kinmen and Matsu islands, which lie just off the coast of China’s Fujian province and are geographically part of them.

– During the Cold War, Chinese forces regularly bombarded Kinmen and Matsu, but Taiwan maintained

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