Taiwan Really Isn't China But It Does Not Matter
China continues to make lots of noise about how Taiwan is part of China and how there can't be Two Chinas. How true is that historically?
China historically didn't include Mongolia or Manchuria, Tibet, or the far west. Here is a map from the Han Dynasty.
The Han Dynasty was the second Dynasty and lasted roughly 400 years. Even after numerous dynasties in between, the Ming Dynasty kept mostly to the same borders, though with an expansion to the northeast and southwest.
The last dynasty was the Qing Dynasty. Like the Mongols previously, the Qinq Dynasty were foreign conquerors, this time from Manchuria. The Manchus were not Chinese.
The Manchus greatly expanded their domain and their area of control looks much like China today.
The Manchus had already conquered half of Mongolia prior to conquering China in 1644. The Manchus then went on to conquer the rest of Mongolia, Xinjiang and the rest of central Asia, and Tibet, as well as accepting tribute from various neighboring countries.
The Qing did not unify their conquests into one empire, but instead ruled it as 5 separate empires. The Qing kept separate laws for each region. They dressed differently when visiting each region. The Manchu interacted with each region differently. Han China was just one of the 5 kingdoms. It didn't have control over the other kingdoms.
So, when the Manchu empire fell and became a republic, the Han portion really didn't have any authority to claim Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, or Manchuria. And the Chinese Republic struggled to exert control over these regions.
What About Taiwan?
Well, that is a fascinating story. Prior to the Ming, there are some scattered accounts of efforts by Chinese to explore Taiwan, but there were no settlements and only some native Taiwanese tribes, and not even that many of them.
A record from a 14th century visit found no Chinese on the island.
Portuguese sailors named the island Formosa in 1544. The Portuguese didn't establish a colony.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC), after losing a battle to the Portuguese at Macao in 1622, then to the Chinese, the Dutch (in pink above) first established a fort on the southwest side of the island. The Spanish (in green on the above map) set up their own fort on the northern side. About 1500 Chinese lived on the island at the time.
Of the two the Dutch were much more successful and the Dutch conquered the Spanish colony in 1642. For about 40 years the Dutch ran a successful and profitable colony. They invited immigrants from China and exported sugar, tea, and deer hides, as well as serving as a transshipping center for good from elsewhere to Japan and China, as well as local and regional produc ts going out. It was very lucrative to the Dutch.
The Dutch couldn't get the natives to work on the plantations so they encouraged immigration from mainland Chinese.
After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, a Ming supporter (and half pirate) decided to go to Taiwan and establish his base there to oppose the Manchu. He invaded the Dutch colony and besieged the main fort for months. He eventually succeeded in kicking the Dutch from the island and establishing a short lived kingdom.
In 1681, the kingdom was defeated. The Manchus really didn't want it, and ended up removing all by 7,000 Chinese from the island. They limited migration to Taiwan for the next 80 years. Once migration opened up, Chinese quickly moved to the island and there were soon 2 million on Taiwan by 1811.
After many countries attempted to conquer Taiwan, the Japanese successfully did so and the Qing Dynasty ceded it to Japan in 1895.
So what does it all mean?
So, the long and short of it is that Taiwan isn't an ancient Chinese possession. It was colonized first by Europeans and only reluctantly added to the Qing Dynasty domains, which were not a single kingdom. It really isn't that different than the Spanish claim to the Philippines, as the Spanish actually controlled the Philippines for more the century prior to the Manchus taking Taiwan.
When the KMT retreated to Taiwan it was similar to the retreat of the Ming loyalist pirate. So Taiwan really isn't an ancient Chinese possession and an integral part of China. China could easily move forward without Taiwan.
But it does not really matter
The Chinese will one day integrate Taiwan into the new Chinese empire. I doubt it will do so by military conquest.
Taiwan was been co-opted bit by bit over the last 40 years, as Taiwanese businesses have invested in mainland Chinese factories. Taiwan has gotten very rich off of China and would rapidly decline in wealth if cut off from access to mainland China.
Additionally, China is no longer the poor country it once was. Instead, it is becoming much wealthier than Taiwan.
The KMT heritage is largely a spent force. The KMT was just a warlord faction, for all of its claim of adherence to Western values. Likewise PRC is a nationalist society, not a communist one.
China would destroy Taiwan trying to conquer it. Instead we will likely see something like the Hong Kong integration. At some point Taiwan will likely request a union of some sort. It could just be a loose union at first. It might take 100 years to fully integrate Taiwan into China, but the path is set.