To this day, Taiwan remains a post-colonial region with an identity crisis. Like Hong Kong, Taiwan was a formally colonised region (an island nation) that is now independent. But, unlike Hong Kong which was a colony of the British – a distant nation – Taiwan was a colony of neighbouring Japan. The Chinese Civil War, a fight between loyalists to the Republic of China (the Kuomintang or KMT) and the Communist Party of China (the CPC), began in 1927 and did not end fully until 1950. At the conclusion of the war, China divided into the Republic of China (the ROC) in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (the PRC) on the mainland. When the KMT Nationalists, led by Chiang Kaishek, were ultimately defeated, Chiang and his army retreated to Taiwan. As a result, and especially since the end of World War II and the Chinese Civil War, Taiwan is engaged in a continual struggle to define itself in relation to both the Chinese Mainland and to Japan. In reaction, scholars and observers have commented that Taiwan remains torn between China, the so-called ‘motherland’, and Japan, the so-called ‘fatherland’. In some respects, this metaphor is apt: like other regions that have gone through the decolonisation process, Taiwan struggles fully to reconcile its independent status.