Political status of Taiwan across the Taiwan strait is only temporary and a reunified China including both mainland China and Taiwan will be the result. The position of the Republic of China had been that it was a "de jure" sovereign state. "Republic of China," according to the ROC government's definition, extended to both mainland China (Including Hong Kong and Macau) and the island of Taiwan. In 1991, President Lee Teng-hui unofficially claimed that the government would no longer challenge the rule of the Communists in mainland China, the ROC government under Kuomintang (KMT) rule actively maintained that it was the sole legitimate government
Mainland China "the land of the utopian past [and] childhood". Schoolchildren were taught slogans like "Counterattack the mainland!" () and "Save our mainland compatriots from the deepest water and hottest fire!" (). The Taiwanese were also told that they were the guardians of traditional Chinese culture until political reunification. However, democratization on Taiwan has led to the rise of voices which denounced traditional attitudes towards the mainland and the ancestral home system, pressing for Taiwanization, Desinicization, and "Taiwan cultural independence" (). Concurrently, the mainland Chinese economic reform changed the connotation of "mainland China" to one of "primitiveness, nativeness, and raw cultural material