Wow, my aim was really to be strict about the terminology and always talk about Beijing/PRC or Taipei/ROC, but I noticed that I was saying "China" and "Taiwan" a lot of the time. Lucky I'm not trying to be the President, eh?

I'm sorry it's so long, but on the other hand I think I speak pretty slow, so it's probably pretty amenable to sped-up listening. :-)

Or, you can skip ~27 minutes in to go straight to my overview of the current situation, without the "short" background.

Also, pardon my pronunciation of Chinese names, which is an unpredictable mix of Cantonese, Cantonese-accented Mandarin, Mandarin and English.

Background:

• 1644 Qing dynasty
• 1868 Meiji Restoration
• 1871 Imperial Japanese Army
• 1895 End of First Sino-Japanese War
  • Treaty of Shimonoseki, annexation of Formosa/Taiwan
• 1905
  • End of Russo-Japanese war, birth of Kwantung Army
    • Don't mix up Kwantung/Guandung and Guangdong! One is in Manchuria in the north-east, one is near Hong Kong in the south ...
  • Korea a Japanese protectorate
• 1910 Japan annexes Korea
• 1911 Xinhai Revolution
• 1919
  • End of World War I
  • Japan receives Germany's Chinese concessions
  • Kuomintang founded
• 1921 Communist Party of China
• 1924 Mongolian People's Republic
• 1925 Death of Sun Yat-sen
• 1928 Northern Expedition
• 1932
  • Mukden Incident
  • Manchukuo
• 1936 Xi'an incident (don't mix up general Chiang and general Zhang!)
• 1937 Japanese invasion, fall of Nanking
  
  (Image license: CC-by-SA, Wikipedia users Rowanwindwhistler and W.wolny, based on public domain work created by the US federal government)
• 1945
  • WWII ends, Japan returns Taiwan to the ROC
  • Chinese Communist Revolution
• 1947
  • Last election to the full ROC Legislative Yuan
  • February 28 Incident between native Taiwanese and the ROC government
• 1949 PRC: CCP controls 99% of ROC
  • Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion
  • ROC recognizes Mongolia
• 1950
  • Korean war
  • USA enters PRC-ROC politics
• 1961
  • Mongolia enters the UN
  • Sino-Soviet split
• 1971 July: Nixon goes to China
• 1971 August: UN votes for PRC
• 1975 Death of Chiang Kai-shek
• 1976 Death of Mao
• 1978 Economic reform (Deng Xiaoping)
• 1979 US recognition of the PRC
• 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration (One Country, Two Systems)
• 1986 Democratic Progressive Party voted into Legislative Yuan
• 1987 Martial law lifted
• 1988 Death of Chiang Ching-kuo
• 1991 Temporary Provisions rescinded, DPP legal
• 1991 SEF and ARATS founded
• 1992 PRC-ROC consensus on the One China Principle
• 1996 Direct Presidential election, Taiwan Strait crisis
• 1997 Handover of Hong Kong to PRC
• 2000 First DPP President
• 2008 Three Links, President Ma Ying-jeou (KMT)
• 2014 Sunflower Movement
• 2015 Ma-Xi meeting
• 2016 DPP President Tsai Ing-wen

Here's the text from IRC:

China doesn't want Taiwan to be independent because that would be a loss of prestige to China.

There are no technical details about it, it's all about symbolism.

The China thing is a really interesting thing to unpack. First of all, if you ask the traditional ruling party on Taiwan, the KMT or GMD (Guo Min Dang), there is no country called Taiwan. The KMT and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) agree that there is only one China and Taiwan is simply a province of that China. Where they disagree is whether the true government of the whole is in Beijing or in Taipei. (fun fact: the official capital of the Republic of China (Taiwan) is Nanjing, which is not under ROC control)

Also, some de-facto parts of India and all of Mongolia is officially part of the ROC, according to their Constitution.

If you fly from Beijing, there are domestic flights and "international flights and domestic flights to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan".

So the US and UN stance since 1972 is "there is one China, and its government is in Beijing". But at the same time US is giving military support to Taipei, which according to Beijing is an unruly province.

As long as the status quo holds – that Taipei claims to rule all of China and Beijing claims to rule all of China and no outsider that matters challenges that – China (both of them!) is happy. It works, there are extended business relations between the two jurisdictions (most of the electronics made in China are made in factories owned by Taiwanese companies)

Both the CCP and the KMT hope that in the long term, this can gradually creep toward a unification of China. If Taiwan would declare independence, that would mean war.

Now, the current ruling party, the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) officially support driving toward a Taiwanese rather than a Chinese national identity, and at some point independence. They are being very careful about it though, because they are also aware of how Beijing would react if they went out and did it. Also, while they do control the majority of the Legislative Yuan, there is a significant minority in Taiwan that adhere to a Chinese identity, don't want to upset China, and don't want formal independence. The current quirky situation works, and barriers have been coming down over the years. Relations are abnormal yet normal. On the rhetorical level it's all messed up, in practice you can fly between the island and the mainland, you can conduct business and send post, etc.

When ROC (Republic of China, "Taiwan") and PRC (People's Republic of China, "Mainland China") representatives meet, there are no embassies or consulates involved, because neither acknowledges the other as a country. Neither President will call the other "President", because that would imply they represent a country, rather than a rebel faction inside what the other side considers China.

So when Trump goes on Twitter and says "The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!" that's a huge scandal in the eyes of Beijing. There is no President of Taiwan, and to imply so is to imply that Taiwan is a country and should be independent.

That's as short as I can make it, but that's the low-down on what's up in the Taiwan Strait.

Further reference (all Wikipedia):

• China and the United Nations
• United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758
• Pan-Blue Coalition (mainly KMT)
• Pan-Green Coalition (mainly DPP)
• Political status of Taiwan
• Chinese unification

Tangential background (all except one from Wikipedia):

• Qing conquest of the Ming
• Unequal treaty
• Taiwan under Japanese rule
• May Fourth Movement
• Recognition of the PRC
• Demographics of Taiwan
• Population of Taiwan 1945 – 1952 (wolframalpha)
• Mongolia—Taiwan relations
• Taiwan after World War II
• Socialism with Chinese characteristics