Provinces of China the province, rather than the nominal governor of the provincial government. The government of each standard province () is nominally led by a provincial committee, headed by a secretary. The committee secretary is first-in-charge of the province; second-in-command is the governor of the provincial government. The People's Republic of China (PRC) claims the island of Taiwan and its surrounding islets, including Penghu, as "Taiwan Province", though Taiwan has not been under control of a government that ruled from mainland China since 1949, when the Republic of China lost the mainland to the Communist Party of China, which established the PRC.
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