> What I didn't get is that both governments consider China to include the Taiwan territory, they just don't agree on which is the legitimate government. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
(I live and grew up in the US, but my family is Taiwanese.)
That description is a generation or two out of date. It is still technically the official position, but only because China continuously threatens total war if Taiwan ever backs down from that position. Since the end of the civil war there was never, ever any plausible way in which the nationalist forces in Taiwan could have retaken the lost mainland territory. After Mao's debacles, I don't think they even wanted to. It was only General Chiang Kai-shek's stubbornness that kept the policy in place until his death in 1975. By then the idea would have been laughable.
You may have heard about "Taiwanese independence" being an issue in the news every now and then over the last few decades. Taiwan is an independent country and always has been; its territory has never, ever been controlled by the PRC. What "Taiwanese independence" is about is the idea of a national referendum (which would involve changing the Taiwan constitution) to renounce all claims to the mainland, rename the country to be just Taiwan instead of the Republic of China, and drop the whole "One China" schtick.
In polling, the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese are "for independence" in the literal sense of being against reunification. Reunification might have once been a considered option, but the fate of Hong Kong showed what would result from going down that path. Other than a small percentage of the population who are nutjob far-right Chinese nationalist extremists (every country has its wackos), nobody wants reunification anymore.
So no political movement in Taiwan expects to reclaim the mainland. No political movement in Taiwan expects to peaceably unify with the mainland either (not since 2014 at least). The current ruling party, the DDP, keeps pledging to have a referendum on independence, but never follows through because China says it's a red line for war. The opposition party, the KMT, doesn't want reconquest or reunification anymore, but advocates for maintaining the status quo for merely pragmatic reasons.
(I live and grew up in the US, but my family is Taiwanese.)
That description is a generation or two out of date. It is still technically the official position, but only because China continuously threatens total war if Taiwan ever backs down from that position. Since the end of the civil war there was never, ever any plausible way in which the nationalist forces in Taiwan could have retaken the lost mainland territory. After Mao's debacles, I don't think they even wanted to. It was only General Chiang Kai-shek's stubbornness that kept the policy in place until his death in 1975. By then the idea would have been laughable.
You may have heard about "Taiwanese independence" being an issue in the news every now and then over the last few decades. Taiwan is an independent country and always has been; its territory has never, ever been controlled by the PRC. What "Taiwanese independence" is about is the idea of a national referendum (which would involve changing the Taiwan constitution) to renounce all claims to the mainland, rename the country to be just Taiwan instead of the Republic of China, and drop the whole "One China" schtick.
In polling, the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese are "for independence" in the literal sense of being against reunification. Reunification might have once been a considered option, but the fate of Hong Kong showed what would result from going down that path. Other than a small percentage of the population who are nutjob far-right Chinese nationalist extremists (every country has its wackos), nobody wants reunification anymore.
So no political movement in Taiwan expects to reclaim the mainland. No political movement in Taiwan expects to peaceably unify with the mainland either (not since 2014 at least). The current ruling party, the DDP, keeps pledging to have a referendum on independence, but never follows through because China says it's a red line for war. The opposition party, the KMT, doesn't want reconquest or reunification anymore, but advocates for maintaining the status quo for merely pragmatic reasons.