Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Mention the island of Taiwan in mainland China, and you are likely to be greeted with a frown and a headshake. Taiwan, your host may tell you, is a problem foreigners do not understand. Virtually all of the 23.4 million people of Taiwan are Chinese. Taiwan was part of China during the Qing Dynasty. Taiwan was stolen from China by Japanese imperialists in 1895, when it was known as Formosa. Then, when communists and Nationalists were fighting each other for control of mainland China right after World War II, and the communists were about to win, the Nationalists in 1949 fled by plane and boat to Taiwan, where they overpowered the locals. Even as Mao Zedong was proclaiming the birth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing, the loser, Chiang Kai-shek, named his regime in Taiwan the Republic of China (ROC)—and told the world that he headed China’s “legitimate” government. The PRC, of course, ridiculed this assertion, but the ROC had powerful friends, especially the United States. . . . While the PRC languished under communist rule, Taiwan—the name commonly employed for the ROC—advanced economically . . ." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 385]