evidence: Historical sources suggest it first came under the full control of a Chinese empire in the 17th Century. It became a Japanese colony in 1895, after the Qing empire lost the first Sino-Japanese war. Then in 1945, after Japan lost World War Two, China took the island but now a nationalist government, led by General Chiang Kai-shek, was in power. This was at the height of a decades-long conflict between Chiang's forces and Mao Zedong's Communist Party. When the communists won in 1949, Chiang and what was left of the nationalist party, known as the Kuomintang or KMT, fled to Taiwan, where they ruled for several decades. They called this the Republic of China, a name Taiwan has retained.