In 1895, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China lost the First Sino-Japanese War and was forced to cede Taiwan and Penghu to the Empire of Japan after signing the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

At the time, the Kuomintang (KMT) was the ruling party of the ROC, and was widely recognized as its legitimate representative, especially due to the collaboration of its leader Chiang Kai-shek with the Allied Powers.

According to the common narrative, the ROC was divided into many different ruling cliques and secessionist states, which were in a constant struggle following the power vacuum which was created after the overthrowing of the Qing Dynasty.

However, the ROC is a unique case, given that it has still managed to attain a significant degree of unofficial international recognition, even though most countries do not officially recognize it as a sovereign state.

[4] The Constitution of the Republic of China states that its territory includes the mainland,[5] but the official policy of the Taiwanese government is dependent on which coalition is currently in power.

[7][8] The concept of Chinese unification was developed in the 1970s as part of the CCP's strategy to address the "Taiwan issue" as China started to normalize foreign relations with a number of countries including the United States and Japan.

[9][10] According to the state-run China Internet Information Center, in 1979, the National People's Congress published the Message to Compatriots in Taiwan (告台湾同胞书) which included the term "Chinese reunification" as an ideal for Cross-Strait relations.

[14][15] Taiwan has a complicated history of being at least partially occupied and administered by larger powers including the Dutch East India Company, the Kingdom of Tungning (purporting to be a continuation of the Southern Ming), the Qing dynasty and the Empire of Japan.

[17] At the de facto end of the Chinese Civil War in 1950, KMT and CCP government faced each other across the Strait, with each aiming for a military takeover of the other.

"[19] The irredentist narrative emphasizing the importance of a unified Greater China area, which purportedly include Taiwan, arose in both the Kuomintang and the CCP in the years during and after the civil war.

In the civil war years it set the communist movement apart from the ROC, which had lost Manchuria, the ancestral homeland of the Qing emperors, to Japan in 1932.

[21] By the 1970s, the Kuomintang's authoritarian military dictatorship in Taiwan, led by the Chiang family was becoming increasingly untenable due to the popularity of the Tangwai movement and Taiwanese nationalism.

In 1970, then-Vice Premier, Chiang Ching-kuo survived an assassination attempt in New York City by Cheng Tzu-tsai and Peter Huang, both members of the World United Formosans for Independence.

[22] The Kuomintang's heavy-handed oppression in the Kaohsiung Incident, alleged involvement in the Lin family massacre and the murders of Chen Wen-chen and Henry Liu, and the self-immolation of Cheng Nan-jung galvanized the Taiwanese community into political actions and eventually led to majority rule and democracy in Taiwan.

Taiwanese who grew up under Japanese rule, which accounted for more than 85% of the population, gained more influence and the KMT began to move away from its ideology of cross-strait unification.

Within Taiwan, unification supporters tend to see "China" as a larger cultural entity divided by the Chinese Civil War into separate states or governments within the country.

However, supporters do oppose desinicization inherent in Communist ideology such as that seen during the Cultural Revolution, along with the effort to emphasize a Taiwanese identity as separate from a Chinese one.

In the 2000 presidential election, independent candidate James Soong proposed a European Union-style relation with mainland China (this was echoed by Hsu Hsin-liang in 2004) along with a non-aggression pact.

Developments in Hong Kong have caused the population of Taiwan in recent years to find "One China, Two Systems" to be "unpersuasive, unappealing, and even untrustworthy.

"[25] Unification proposals were not actively floated in Taiwan and the issue remained moot under President Chen Shui-bian, who refused to accept talks under Beijing's pre-conditions.

[citation needed] A series of high-profile visits in 2005 to China by the leaders of the three pan-Blue Coalition parties was seen as an implicit recognition of the status quo by the PRC government.

Notably, Kuomintang chairman Lien Chan's trip was marked by unedited coverage of his speeches and tours (and some added positive commentary) by government-controlled media and meetings with high level officials including Hu Jintao.

The CCP and the Pan-Blue Coalition parties emphasized their common ground in renewed negotiations under the 1992 consensus, opening the Three Links, and opposing Taiwan's formal independence.

[28] In January 1979, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress issued its first appeal to the KMT, which marked the start of the PRC's "peaceful reunification" strategy.

Irredentist in nature, those who possess this view commonly perceive Retrocession Day to be the conclusion to a continuous saga of reunification struggles on both sides of the strait, lasting from 1895, the year that Taiwan Island was ceded to Japan, up until 1945, the end of the Second World War.

Hence, there is a common view among the Pan-Blue camp that the island of Taiwan was always a Chinese territory under Japanese occupation and never belonged to Japan, neither legally nor in spirit.

Shortly following these events, the island of Taiwan was split from mainland China again, according to the common Pan-Blue view, marking the beginning of another reunification saga.

[60]: 37 [61]: 62  The study concluded that education level and unfavorable views of the Taiwan government were the greatest predictors of support for military force for unification.

[61]: 46 A 2020-2021 national public opinion poll conducted in China by academics Adam Y. Liu and Xiaojun Li analyzed public approval for a range of policies, including military force for unification, limited warfare in offshore islands, economic sanctions, maintaining the status quo, and de facto Taiwan independence.

[60]: 33–34  The resulting study, published in 2023 in the Journal of Contemporary China, concludes that 55% of respondents support using military force for unification, although that amount was not greater than various less aggressive policy options.