Once again, the former Formosa island faces China's aggressive show of force. A fleet of Chinese warships has encircled the ...

For over 75 years, the Republic and People’s Republic of China have confronted each other across the Taiwan Strait, a highly ...

Its military dwarfs the island nation's armed forces ... a plan to invade Taiwan (then a Japanese colony called Formosa) because it was deemed too costly. U.S. military planners concluded that ...

establishing the short-lived Republic of Formosa. It took the Japanese empire some 150 days to wrest control of the island away from the republic; Taiwan ultimately became Japan’s first colony.

referring to what the island’s pilots have had ... seen as a symbol of Taiwanese identity. Taiwan was previously better known internationally as Formosa. “Where can we get a patch like that!

Portuguese explorers arrived in the region by the 16th century and dubbed Taiwan "Ilha Formosa" (“beautiful island”), but it was the Dutch who gained a foothold there. In 1624, they ...

Taiwan, though, is part of a larger package of issues ... airbases somewhere in the “strategic triangle” formed by Luzon (the largest island in the Philippines), Formosa and southern China. That meant ...

Feast your eyes on the images below, including selections from the annual Smithsonian.com photo contest, and discover why Taiwan is known as "Ilha Formosa" or "beautiful island." Taiwan is a ...