Taiwan
Details
The island of Taiwan is strategically located, between mainland China, Japan's Okinawa islands and the Philippines, close to the East and South China Seas. Over millennia it was settled by mostly-Austronesian indigenous people, whose strongholds in the mountainous east retained independence as late as the 19th century. Later came waves of Hoklo and Hakka Chinese from the nearby mainland. Though Ming China came to reject overseas expansion, many Chinese found Taiwan a convenient base for unofficial maritime trade or piracy, according to convenience. In the 16th and 17th centuries the Portuguese and Dutch spearheaded European commerce in the area.
General Zheng Chenggong (AKA Koxinga), held out against the new Qing Dynasty in the Fuzhou region, until his siege of Nanjing failed. In 1662 his remaining forces took the Dutch stronghold of Fort Zeelandia and he formed the kingdom of Tungning, where his heirs held out against the Manchus for two more decades, in an eerie parallel to Chiang Kai-shek three centuries later. In the end, a combination of diplomacy and military pressure won over the heirs, who surrendered the island (their practical control was limited to the southwest) and were given titles in the Beijing aristocracy.
In 1895 the newly aggressive Empire of Japan defeated the declining Qing Dynasty and was granted Taiwan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Japanese policy combined investments in economic infrastructure, efforts at cultural assimilation and mass Japanese immigration. When Japan was defeated in World War II the island was returned to Chinese rule and the 350,000-strong Japanese community was largely deported back to Japan.
But Chinese control proved short-lived. In 1949 years of civil war ended in communist victory. Nationalist president Chiang Kai-shek withdrew to Taiwan and turned it into an anti-communist outpost with American support, where he presided until his death in 1975. Two million mainlanders joined six million Taiwanese, with whom they refused to share power. Over the following decades Chiang Ching-guo gradually took over the reins from his father and effected an economic miracle, making Taiwan one of eastern Asia's "Four Tigers" (along with South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore).
But internationally, Taiwan became more and more isolated: in 1971 the United Nations finally recognized the communist takeover of China (the Americans refused to use their veto) and in 1978 even the USA officially recognized Beijing's communist regime. Political liberalization finally came in the late 1980s. After Chiang Ching-guo's death his Nationalist successor Lee Teng-hui ended the martial law regime and allowed free elections. In 1900 Taiwan elected Chen Shui-bian as its first non-Nationalist president.
Taiwan today is in a state of limbo. The official government line is still "There is one China and Taiwan is part of it," the same as the mainland government's position, but the actual situation is de facto independence. The Chinese leadership will grumble and perform military exercises, but so far has been too cautious to attempt a military conquest of the island. The Taiwanese government, on the other hand, is too cautious to declare independence. How long will the stalemate last?
For background reading, you can try Jonathan Manthorpe's Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan.
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