The Taiwan issue is a product of the Cold War.
The losers of Chinese civil war fled to the island and occupied it with the help of the United States.
No matter what people on the island think, the island is always a part of China.
They live there doesn't mean Taiwan island belongs to them.
THE HISTORY OF TAIWAN ISLAND
The first known settlers in Taiwan are Austronesian tribal people thought to have come from modern day southern China.
The island first appears in Chinese records in 239 CE, when China sent an expeditionary force to explore -- a fact Beijing uses to back its territorial claim.
After a brief spell as a Dutch colony [of the Dutch East India Company or VOC - Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie] (1624-1661) Taiwan was administered by China's Qing Dynasty from 1683 to 1895, under Fujian Province administration. The Dutch colonial force was driven out by Zheng Chenggong, aka. Prince of Yanping (1624–1662), better known internationally by his Dutch-Romanised Hokkien honorific Koxinga or Coxinga.
Zheng Chenggong was a Chinese Ming loyalist who resisted the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century, fighting them on China's southeastern coast. In 1661, Koxinga defeated the Dutch outposts on Taiwan and established a dynasty, the House of Koxinga, which ruled part of the island as the Kingdom of Tungning from 1661 to 1683. The Dutch force relocated to the archipelago in the Southeastern Asia, what is today Indonesia.
From the 17th century, significant numbers of migrants started arriving from China, often fleeing turmoil or hardship. Most were Hoklo Chinese [Minnan / Southern Min or Hokkien people] from Fujian (old spelling: Fukien) Province or Hakka Chinese, largely from Guangdong (old spelling: Kwangtung, aka. Canton). The Taiwan island itself was administered by Fujian Province. The descendants of these two migrations now make up by far the largest population group.
The Minnan or Southern Min literally 'Southern Fujian language', or Banlam (Southern Min pronunciation), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan (many citizens are descendants of settlers from Fujian), Eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and Southern Zhejiang. The Minnan dialects are also spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. It is the most populous branch of Min Chinese, spoken by an estimated 48 million people in ca. 2017–2018.
The Minnan or Southern Fujian region refers to the coastal region in Southern Fujian Province, China, which includes the prefecture-level cities of Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The region accounts for 40 percent of the GDP of Fujian Province. It is the native homeland of the Hokkien people who speak the Hokkien language or Minnan language, a variety of Southern Min.
In 1895, following Japan's victory in the Imperial Japan's First Invasion of China, the Qing government had to cede Taiwan to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, or known as Treaty of Maguan by Chinese side, including the Diaoyu Islands (Japan calls it Senkaku Islands) and few other small islands under Taiwan control at that time. After World War Two, the Republic of China, one of the victors began ruling Taiwan, after Japan surrendered and relinquished control of territory it had taken from China.
However in the next few years, a civil war broke out in China and the leader at the time Chiang Kai-shek's troops were beaten back by the Communist armies under Mao Zedong (CPC - Communist Party of China). Chiang and the remnants of his Kuomintang (KMT) government fled to Taiwan in 1949. This group, referred to as "Mainland Chinese" and then making up 1.5 million people, dominated Taiwan's politics for many years -- even though they only account for 14% of the population. Taiwan's population is less than 24 million in 2021.
Relations between China and Taiwan started improving in the 1980s. China put forward a formula, known as "One Country, Two Systems", under which Taiwan would be given significant autonomy if it accepted Chinese reunification.
Taiwan rejected the offer, but it did relax rules on visits to and investment in China. In 1991, it also proclaimed the war with the People's Republic of China on the mainland China to be over.
There were also limited talks between the two sides' unofficial representatives, though Beijing's insistence that Taiwan's Republic of China (ROC) government is illegitimate, meant government-to-government meetings could not happen.
And in 2000, when Taiwan elected Chen Shui-bian as president, Beijing was alarmed. Chen had openly backed an independent Taiwan.
A year after Chen Shui-bian was re-elected in 2004, China under Hu Jintao reign passed a so-called ANTI-SECESSION LAW, stating China's right to use "non-peaceful means" against Taiwan if the island ever attempts to secede from China.
Chen was succeeded by Ma Ying-jeou, who, after taking office in 2008, sought to improve relations with China through economic agreements.
Eight years later, in 2016, Tsai Ing-wen was elected as the new leader in Taipei. She leads the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which leans towards eventual official independence from China.
China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province which it has vowed to retake, by force if necessary. But Taiwan's leaders say it is clearly much more than a province, arguing that it is a sovereign state.
Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China (ROC) government, which fled the mainland to Taiwan in 1949, at first claimed to represent the whole of China, which it intended to re-occupy. It held China's seat on the United Nations Security Council and was recognised by many Western nations as the only Chinese government.
But in 1971, the UN switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing and the ROC government was forced out. Since then the number of countries that recognise the ROC government diplomatically has fallen drastically to only 15 out of the 193 member countries of the United Nations.
The 15 states and statelets that recognize Taiwan as the Republic of China (ROC) are (sorted by population): 1. Guatemala (18.2 million population in 2021); 2. Haiti (11.5 mn); 3. Honduras (10 mn); 4. Paraguay (7.2 mn); 5. Nicaragua (6.7 mn); 6. Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) (1.2 mn); 7. Belize (404,914); 8. Saint Lucia (184,400); 9. Saint Vincent And The Grenadines (111,263); 10. Marshall Islands (59,610); 11. Saint Kitts And Nevis (53,544); 12. Palau (18,169); 13. Tuvalu (11,931); 14. Nauru (10,876); 15. Vatican City (800)
Officially, the ruling DPP still favours eventual formal independence for Taiwan, while the KMT favours eventual re-unification.
Taiwan is an island a bit larger than Maryland but with four times the inhabitants. When it was seized by Japan in 1895, it was a province of Qing China. Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China recovered it from Japan in 1945. When Chiang lost civil war in 1949, he fled to Taiwan.
“Nations habitually mark the limits of their sovereignty with the graves of their warriors and the bones of those who have challenged them.”
~ Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (2018), a former diplomat of the U.S. for over 30 years
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