evidence: China sees self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be under Beijing's control - and has not ruled out the use of force to take the island. [...] 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. The Chinese Communist Party points to this history to claim Taiwan. But the Taiwanese point to the same history to argue that they were not part of the modern Chinese state that was first formed after the revolution in 1911 - or the People's Republic of China that was established under Mao in 1949.