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The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory has been operating since 2000. Over the past decade, thanks to the continuously increased bunch intensity and reduced ?*s at the interaction points, the maximum peak luminosity in the polarized proton operation has been increased by more than two orders of magnitude. In this article, we first present the beam-beam observations in the previous RHIC polarized proton runs. Then we analyze the mechanisms for the beam loss and emittance growth in the presence of beam-beam interaction. The operational challenges and limitations imposed by beam-beam interaction and their remedies are also presented. In the end, we briefly introduce head-on beam-beam compensation with electron lenses in RHIC.