evidence: TAIPEI (Reuters) - It is "impossible" for the People's Republic of China to become Taiwan's motherland because Taiwan has older political roots, the island's President Lai Ching-te said on Saturday. [...] The republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong's communists who set up the People's Republic of China, which continues to claim the island as its "sacred" territory. [...] Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a speech on the eve of his country's national day, reiterated his government's view that Taiwan was its territory.