Beijing views the island as a province that broke away and will one day become a member of its own nation; it has not ruled out using force to this end. However, a significant portion of Taiwanese people believe they belong to a different country, even if the majority support the current situation in which Taiwan does not ally or proclaim independence from China.
What is the history between China and Taiwan?
Taiwan’s first known settlers were Austronesian tribal people, believed to have come from modern day southern China.
Chinese records appear to first mention the island in AD239, when an emperor dispatched an expeditionary force to it – a fact Beijing uses to back its territorial claim.
After a relatively brief spell as a Dutch colony, Taiwan was administered by China’s Qing dynasty, before it was ceded to Tokyo after Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War.
After World War Two, Japan surrendered and relinquished control of territory it had taken from China. Afterwards, Taiwan was officially considered occupied by the Republic of China (ROC), which began ruling with the consent of its allies, the US and UK.
But in the next few years a civil war broke out in China, and then-leader Chiang Kai-shek’s troops were defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist army.
Chiang, the remnants of his Kuomintang (KMT) government and their supporters – about 1.5m people – fled to Taiwan in 1949.
Chiang established a dictatorship that ruled Taiwan until the 1980s. Following his death, Taiwan began a transition to democracy and held its first elections in 1996.
