If I said point to China on a map where would you point? Probably east Asia, but did you know there is another country called China, although a bit different. Let's find out.
Yuan Shikai and Jiang Jieshi seem to not have existed in this timeline of history. Democracy never existed in China even after the collapse of the Qing dynasty.
The most recently elected party in Taiwan broadly supports Taiwan independence with no regard to PRC. The support for "reunification" in any form (immediate or future) sits at something like 8-10% among the public of Taiwan. It is true that the Pan-Blues (mainly the KMT but consisting of other smaller parties) maintain that the Republic of China is the legitimate Chinese government, however they generally believe now that reunification is only possible or desirable once the communist regime collapses on its own. In reality it is a bit eroneous (or at least, incomplete) to claim that Taiwan and its government/people view the territory of the PRC as theirs in the same way that the PRC absolutely does as a matter of explicit state policy consider Taiwan to be a province of the PRC. Independence on their own terms is a popular and growing idea in Taiwan. If you made this presentation in 1970 it would almost certainly have reflected the mostly complete picture, but now it is notably incomplete. It is also a bit incomplete to say "war experts expect an invasion by 2030". That is an incredibly contentious topic. Based on how long a military buildup would take, the estimates do place it around 2027-8 assuming it's an "as soon as we can" kind of deal. But China's economic and military situation is extremely complex and conducting the largest amphibious invasion in history with incomplete naval or air dominance and then dealing with the crushing sanctions that would follow would be a strain that China probably could not bare. However Xi is the most one-man show dictator since Mao, with a similar tendency to deify himself and surround himself with lying yes men, ultimately the invasion date will depend on his state of mind and how in-touch he is with reality.
De Facto, Taiwan was occupied by the KMT in the fallout of the Chinese Civil War. The whole conflict is rooted in KMT and CCP's mutual delusion of "one China with Taiwan as part of China". Taiwan was never China. Taiwan was at points in time occupied by Imperial Chinese, Imperial Japanese, and then by KMT nationalists. Only in the 90s did the KMT relinquished totalitarian powers, and now we're finally witnessing Taiwanese restoration into what it always has been. An Austronesian island populated by multicultural settlers that now coexist in an industrialized society. But that's the inconvenient truth neither the CCP nor the KMT want to accept.
Taiwan Island is 95% Han Chinese, very multicultural. Taiwan has been part of the Qing Dynasty since the 1600s, and apart from a period of Japanese occupation, has been Chinese, whether you see it as PRC or ROC, ever since.
@@sniprsprimordium5625 With the arrival of the Dutch in 1624, Taiwan underwent a succession of six foreign colonial rulers: the Dutch (1624-1662), the Spanish (in northern Taiwan, 1626-1642), the Cheng family (1662-1683), the Manchus (1683-1895), the Japanese (1895-1945), and the Chinese Nationalists (1945-1988). Before that, it was Austronesian.
