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Taiwan

OFFICIAL NAME: Republic of China (ROC)

DATE OF FORMATION: 1949

POPULATION: 22.8 million

DENSITY: 1826 people per square mile

LANGUAGES: Amoy Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Hakka Chinese

RELIGIONS: Buddhist, Confucianist, and Taoist 93%, Christian 5%, Other 2%

ETHNIC MIX: Han (pre-20th-century migration) 84%, Han (20th-century migration) 14%, Aboriginal 2%

GOVERNMENT: Multiparty elections

CURRENCY: Taiwan dollar

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The island of Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa, lies off the southeast coast of mainland China. Mountains running north to south cover two-thirds of the island. The lowlands are highly fertile, planted mostly with rice, and densely populated. In 1949, when the Chinese Communists ousted Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) from power on the mainland, he established the Republic of China government on the island. De facto military rule has been democratized progressively since 1986. Mainland China still considers Taiwan to be a renegade province, and only a few countries now give official recognition to the regime on the island.