Taiwan, an island territory off the southeastern coast of China, straddles the Tropic of Cancer in the South China Sea, north of the Philippines. It consists of one main island and several smaller islands in the Taiwan Strait. Its area is 35,980 square kilometers (10,030 square miles), and its population was approximately 22,749,838 in July 2004. Taiwan's per capita income in 2003 was estimated to be $23,400. Its economy has grew dramatically in the last three decades of the twentieth century, and it is a major exporter of electronics and other manufactured goods to the world market. The residents of this mountainous island are nearly all immigrants or descendants of immigrants from mainland China (98%). Most of these people, known as the "Taiwanese," can trace their heritage back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century immigrants. Officially and in the view of the international community Taiwan is a province of China, but it maintains a robust political independence...