What's behind China-Taiwan tensions?

All eyes are on Taiwan ahead of a pivotal presidential race that has been described as a choice between peace and war with mainland China.

Taiwan's frontrunner, William Lai, has been described by Beijing as a "troublemaker", whilst the other two presidential candidates - Hou Yu-ih and Ko Wen-je, have called for closer ties with Beijing.

At the heart of the issue is China's claim over the self-ruled island. Beijing sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will, eventually, be part of the country, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this.

But many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation - although most are in favour of maintaining the status quo where Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.

Taiwan's first known settlers were Austronesian tribal people, believed to have come from modern day southern China.

Chinese records appear to first mention the island in AD239, when an emperor dispatched an expeditionary force to it - a fact Beijing uses to back its territorial claim.

After a relatively brief spell as a Dutch colony, Taiwan was administered by China's Qing dynasty, before it was ceded to Tokyo after Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War.

After World War Two, Japan surrendered and relinquished control of territory it had taken from China. Afterwards, Taiwan was officially considered occupied by the Republic of China (ROC), which began ruling with the consent of its allies, the US and UK.

But in the next few years a civil war broke out in China, and then-leader Chiang Kai-shek's troops were defeated by Mao Zedong's Communist army.

Chiang, the remnants of his Kuomintang (KMT) government and their supporters - about 1.5m people - fled to Taiwan in 1949.

The KMT