Hsinchu Campaign
The Japanese had hoped that their occupation of Taipei on 8 June 1895 would end the fighting in Taiwan. It did not. The Republic of Formosa tottered on for another five months of existence, as its presidency was assumed by Liu Yung-fu on 26 June in Tainan. Liu's assumption of the presidency stiffened the will of ordinary Formosans to resist the invaders. The result was a perceptible growth in guerrilla activity against the Japanese, and as the month of June wore on it became clear that all the island's main towns would have to be occupied forcibly before opposition to the Japanese invasion collapsed. From now on, the capture of Tainan became a political as well as a strategic imperative for the Japanese. During the next four months the Japanese would direct their efforts towards occupying Tainan and snuffing out the nascent Formosan Republic.
Taiwan
The island of Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa, was inhabited by aborigines before the 17th century, when Dutch and Spanish colonies opened the island to mass Han immigration. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty, the last dynasty of China. The Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China (ROC) was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty. Following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROC's loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. Although the ROC continued to claim to be the legitimate government of China, its effective jurisdiction had, since the loss of Hainan in 1950, been limited to Taiwan and several small islands, with the main island making up 99% of its "de facto" territory. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC represented China at the UN until 1971, when it lost its seat to the PRC.