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
Politics of the Republic of China were made to the Constitution in 1991, and there have been a number of judicial interpretations made to take into account the fact that the Constitution covers a much smaller area than originally envisioned. The government in Taipei officially asserts to be the sole legitimate government of all of China, which it defined as including Taiwan, mainland China, and outer Mongolia. In keeping with that claim, when the KMT fled to Taipei in 1949, they re-established the full array of central political bodies, which had existed in mainland China in the de jure capital of Nanjing (Nanking). While much of