The Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as Taiwan, is a state in East Asia comprising the island of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands, which are located off the east coast of mainland China. Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the west, Japan to the north-east, and the Republic of the Philippines to the south.

The founding of the Republic of China began on 10 October 1911 as a result of the Wuchang Uprising, but was not formally established until 1 January 1912. The ROC had once encompassed mainland China and Outer Mongolia. At the end of World War II, with the surrender of Japan, the Republic of China took over the island groups of Taiwan and Penghu from the Japanese Empire. With the end of the world war, the government drafted the Constitution of the Republic of China, which was adopted on 25 December 1947. When the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT), the then leading party of the ROC, lost mainland China in the Chinese Civil War to the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1949, the central government relocated to Taiwan, establishing Taipei as its provisional capital. Despite being forced out of mainland China, Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader, declared that the ROC was still the legitimate government of China and Outer Mongolia. In mainland China, the victorious Communist party founded the People's Republic of China. The Taiwan Area became the extent of the Republic of China's jurisdiction.

China is an ancient civilization extending over a large area in East Asia seen variously as a nation or multinational entity^{[citation needed]}.

In 1949, when major combat ended in the Chinese Civil War, two political entities emerged having the term "China" in their names:

China is one of the world's oldest continuous civilization and for most of the last two millennia was one of the largest and most advanced civilizations in the world, until the 1850s when it missed the industrial revolution. Subsequently, imperialism, wars and civil wars damaged the country and its economy up to the end of the civil war in 1949. In the 1950s, change to economic policies in the Republic of China (Taiwan) transformed the island into a technology-oriented industrialized developed economy. It became known as one of the Four Asian Tigers along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore. In mainland China, in the 1970s, reforms known as the Four Modernizations modernized the agriculture, industry, technology and defense, eventually making the PRC one of the major powers. China is viewed as the source of many major inventions. It has also one of the world's oldest written language systems.

The People's Republic of China (PRC), commonly known as China, is a country in East Asia. It is the most populous state in the world with over 1.3 billion people, about one in five humans. China is ruled by the Communist Party of China under a single-party system, and has jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly administered municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two highly autonomous special administrative regions (SARs) (Hong Kong and Macau). The PRC's capital is Beijing.

At about 9.6 million square kilometres (3.7 million square miles), the PRC is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area, and the second largest by land area. Its landscape is diverse, with forest steppes and deserts (the Gobi and Taklamakan) in the dry north near Mongolia and Russia's Siberia, and subtropical forests in the wet south close to Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. The terrain in the west is rugged and at high altitude, with the Himalayas and the Tian Shan mountain ranges forming China's natural borders with India and Central Asia. In contrast, mainland China's eastern seaboard is low-lying and has a 14,500-kilometre long coastline bounded on the southeast by the South China Sea and on the east by the East China Sea beyond which lies Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.