evidence: The oft-repeated dictum about Taiwan’s territorial status was not widely held within China in 1895, the year that the Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan, which it had annexed in 1684, to Japanese colonization. When Qing officials received Japan’s territorial demands in the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War, they ardently defended the Liaodong Peninsula, in Manchuria, as essential imperial territory, but viewed Taiwan as a shield that could be surrendered. Although some individuals insisted that Taiwan must be retained, or at least not surrendered to Japan, most viewed it as less important than Liaodong. [...] These opinions and depictions do not suggest that Taiwan and its environs rose to the level of integral territory for Qing-era Chinese. Historians have shown that popular and official discussion of Taiwan as a part of China, and formal efforts to gain control of Taiwan by the government of the Republic of China (ROC) and its ruling Nationalist Party, originated in the 1930s and 1940s, within the context of anti-Japanese sentiment and war.