Taiwan island has had multiple waves of mainland migration. There’s the indigenous, Astronesian people, then there was the first general diaspora of Fujian migrants. It was broadly considered part of China.

In 1895, Japan seized Taiwan. Unlike the treatment in South Korea and the mainland, they weren’t as brutal.

At the end of WWII, the territory of Taiwan was returned to the recognised government of China at the time, being the nationalists, the KMT. Note, at the time they were fighting a civil war against the communists.

The communists won against the KMT, and the KMT fled to Taiwan, while still keeping claim over all of China. This where a wave of general mainland migrants come from. The USA stepped in to stop the communists from reclaiming Taiwan. The KMT massacred communists and indigenous people in the White Terror.

The USA eventually switched recognition of the ‘one China’ from the Republic of China govt in Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China govt in Beijing.

Taiwan transitioned from dictatorship to liberal democracy.

At this point in time, Taiwan still officially calls itself the Republic of China, but the KMT are a waning political force, and there’s no realistic prospect of them retaking the mainland. Instead, the current party in power, the DPP, is pushing for independence.

The mainland and Taiwan came to what was called the ‘one China consensus’ a few decades ago, when the KMT was in charge. It basically said that both parties agreed there was only one China, but could interpret that how they wanted. This led to good cross-strait relations. The DPP have since repudiated that.

The USA has allowed Taiwan to become the world leader in semi-conductor fabrication, which is needed for high end technology. Taiwan is currently starving China (and the EU, lol) of semiconductors.

Public opinion in Taiwan is not favourable towards reunification.

The USA wants Taiwan to stay as an allied entity, as part of its efforts to contain China.

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Check ou Carl Zha's silk and steel podcast, hes got it up on youtube. The series is about the geopolitical and class, ethnic, etc. history of tawain from 100s of years ago all the way to the present day.

The most recent episode i saw explained the ongoing semiconductor wars and how they relate to SMIC, TMCI, ASML, bidens new foreign policy, the chinese economy and supply chains, etc. Very interesting and important stuff.

He also has a few good videos (within the silk and steel series i believe?) where he interviews the taiwainese marxist "red rapper" Xiangyu, whom is based as fuck and provides some very interesting perspective to the ongoing cold war and its effects in tawain, as well as many other aspects of the country.

Xiangyu himself is prolly worth checking out too, ive been trying to find more content of his lately. In addition to tawain, he has travelled to the mainland many times and even the DPRK once, and these are perspectives i find very valuable considering how interesting these countries are to me.

If you want something a bit theory-y and from a somewhat (non-Western) Marxist perspective, Chen Kuan-hsing's Asia As Method: Toward Deimperialization is pretty good. Chapters 1 and 4 are probably some of the best takes I've seen on Taiwan in terms of its place in US imperialism and in terms of the US-Cold War mentality that still dominates Taiwan's political culture — it was written in the early 2010s but it rings exceptionally true in light of 2020, when many of Taiwan's seemingly succdem political factions turned full Trumpian.

One shortcoming of Chen's book is that it does not at all critique the blatant settler colonialism in Taiwan independence movements and Taiwan nationalism today. But I can't think of an English text I've read that unpacks the Indigenous struggles in Taiwan's history very well (there's this book Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895 by Emma Jinhua Teng, published by Harvard, but it's a standard academic history of Han Chinese settlements in Taiwan in the 17th-19th centuries, and it's pretty lib and quite settler-centered in perspective).