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Taiwan has bounced between regimes for decades. Under Japanese control for the 50 years between the First Sino-Japanese War and World War Two, it was then taken over by the Republic of China in 1945. After the victory of Mao Zedong and the Communist party in the nearby Chinese Civil War, Chiang Kaishek and the Kuomintang (KMT) party fled to and set up a dictatorial government in Taiwan, which was eventually democratized after the election of a non-KMT president, Chen Shui-bian, in 2000.
Tensions between Taiwan and China come down to the One China Policy, which says that China and Taiwan are part of a single nation, that will eventually be ruled by one government. For China, this means the belief that Taiwan is part of China and will inevitably be reunified with the mainland under the Chinese Communist Party. In extension of this principle, China requires that all countries with diplomatic connections to China break all official ties with Taiwan.
Essentially, China sees an independent Taiwan as a violation of Chinese sovereignty, and has historically gone to great lengths to ensure Taiwan doesn't stray too far from the "one country, two systems" agreement reached in 1992, known as the 1992 Conensus. In 1995, China refused crossstrait diplomatic talks to protest Taiwan's deepened relations with the US, and a year later, China tested missiles near Taiwan as action against Taiwan's first democratic presidential election. This prompted arguably the closest brush with war between the US and China in recent decades, when President Bill Clinton sent two carrier groups to the Taiwan Strait in response. After the tense 1990s, the 2000s saw increased positive relations between the PRC and Taiwan, marked by increased high-level talks and economic cooperation.
Since 2000, Taiwanese politics has been split between the pro-reunification KMT, which views the One China Policy as something that could eventually result in a single nation ruled from Taipei, and their opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is more in favor of clear-cut Taiwanese independence. In 2016, for the first time ever, the KMT lost the majority of Taiwan's legislative body, and DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen was elected president, marking a decisive rise for the DPP.
However, the recent rise of the DPP and the...