Taiwan and larger than Belgium. The island of Taiwan has an area of , and lies some from the southeastern coast of mainland China across the Taiwan Strait. The East China Sea lies to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Bashi Channel of the Luzon Strait directly to the south, and the South China Sea to the southwest. Its shape is similar to a sweet potato, giving rise to the slang term "hanji" ("sweet potato" in Hokkien) used by Taiwanese Hokkien speakers to refer to people of native Taiwanese descent. The island is characterized by the contrast between
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