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 the term "Mainland China" is agreeable to both sides since they both conceive "China" as including mainland and Taiwan, and therefore need this term to distinguish the two areas. However, since it was the KMT who came to this consensus with China, the Pan Green Coalition does not embrace this term as the Pan Blue Coalition does. In Taiwan, under the concept of "Mainlander" another comparative term often used is "waishengren" (), which are the people who immigrated to Taiwan from mainland China with the Kuomintang (KMT) around the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, as well as