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@cg5154
Not quite right. The ruling regime in Taiwan is officially dubbed the Republic of China (ROC), which has been around since 1911. The ROC used to rule the big chunk of land that everybody calls China, with its capital in Nanjing.
In an epic fail in 1949, the ROC managed to lose that entire chunk of land to the Chinese Communist Party, who set up the People's Republic of China (PRC). The ROC government, led by Chiang Kai-shek (Sun Yat-sen was dead by then), high-tailed it to Taiwan and set up shop there.
Since then, there's been the ROC in Taiwan, and the PRC in mainland China. Most of the world acknowledges the PRC to be the "legitimate" China, and they're one of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council. The PRC blocks any move by the international community to treat the ROC/Taiwan as a nation. Which is why the Taiwanese team competes in the Olympics under "Chinese Taipei" rather than "ROC" or "Taiwan".
However, the ROC/Taiwan is a de facto independent country... we've got our own democratically-elected government and all that, independent of the PRC government. I think most of the world, especially the US, doesn't know what to do... on the one hand, nobody wants to piss off China. But on the other hand, Taiwan's got lots of semiconductors and bicycles...