'Troublemaker' becomes president: Taiwan selects candidate who takes an independent stance on China

Taiwan, or “Republic of China”: explanatory word

The island of Taiwan is located about 180 kilometers from the Chinese mainland, and has a population of about 23 million people. In fact, it is a group of islands. Near the mainland there are several islands belonging to Taiwan.

Although Taiwan has its own government, army, currency, passport and airline, it is not recognized by the United Nations as an independent country. Taiwan still considers itself the true China, and its official name is the “Republic of China”, but for most countries there can only be one China, especially the People's Republic of China, ruled by the Communist Party.

To understand this controversy, we have to go back 75 years. The Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, then lost the civil war to Mao Zedong's communist army. The party and its associated army then fled to Taiwan.

Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek installed a regime with fascist tendencies on the island. The repression continued until the late 1980s, and since the 1990s Taiwan has developed into the full democracy it is today.

At the time, the Kuomintang dreamed of reclaiming mainland China from Taiwan and ousting the Communists from power. 75 years of communist rule have shown that such is unrealistic today. Meanwhile, Taiwan increasingly developed into a fundamentally independent country with its own Taiwanese identity.