Geography of Taiwan Geography of Taiwan Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa, is an island in East Asia; located some off the southeastern coast of mainland China across the Taiwan Strait. It has an area of , which includes other nearby islands such as Penghu (). The East China Sea lies to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Luzon Strait directly to the south and the South China Sea to the southwest. The island makes up 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China, which is also known as "Taiwan". Taiwan is a tilted fault block, characterized by the
Mainland China people often call the area of non-coastal provinces in of Mainland China as "Inland" (). In Taiwan, certain people, the Kuomintang (KMT, "Chinese Nationalist Party") and its supporters use the term "mainland" is to refer to the territory of the PRC (Hong Kong and Macau excluded). This accords with the KMT position that "China" encompasses both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Since the KMT was the ruling party in Taiwan until 2000 and the only party allowed until the late 1980s, and had set up the educational system and taught children the term since its takeover in 1945, the term