ABSTRACT
Having looked at how Taiwan came to be of importance to Chinese nationalism, it is possible to understand why any challenge to the claim that Taiwan is a part of China should be of great significance in Chinese politics. A combination of factors internal and external to the island in the decades after its occupation by the ROC in 1945, however, did ultimately lead to such a challenge. That the island had passed through a very different history from that of the Chinese mainland makes this perhaps unsurprising. It is Taiwan’s alternative history, therefore, that should be the starting point for explaining how another vision of the relationship between Chinese state and Chinese nation ultimately developed.
