Ask Lemmygrad

A colony as it exists today yes, but I wouldn't call it specifically a settler-colony. The fleeing KMT had to commit massacres to lay their power on the island, which also gives us an insight into how the islanders existed in relation to the late Qing dynasty and then early Republic, but there was never a basis to create a new nation out of thin air, the fleeing KMT considered themselves to still be the Republic, just in exile. Allowed by the US parking an aircraft carrier in the Strait btw so the CPC could not pursue them and end the civil war.

Taiwan today is more of an advanced military base, a colony of the United States occupying another country (the PRC) as they are known to do. You could call this new generation that the KMT brought to be settlers, but settler-colonialism is a specific process in which settlers from their home nation are meant to replace the indigenous (who become indigenous on the consequence of being settled) and form a new nation. There have been colonies without settlerism, for example plantation colonies where the settlers retained a sense of their home nation, and saw themselves as being temporarily living in the colonies to make a profit off slave labor to eventually return home. So that's why I wouldn't consider Taiwan a settler-colony specifically, because the KMT still lays claims to the borders of the Republic, which they inherited from the Qing borders, and the entire One China Policy was proposed to temporarily solve this paradox of two Chinas existing.

To compound this, Chinese as a national signifier has always been more cultural than ethnic. The chinese nation is formed of 56 recognized ethnic minorities (only reason they stopped at 56 is because every single village could count for their own ethnicity, so the PRC grouped a lot of them together). There are different accents, dialects, up to entirely different language borders in China, even to this day. This is how a lot of countries, even in Europe, used to be for a long time before 'nation building' took over in the 18th and 19th centuries. The entire history of China is basically "Hey let's conquer China they're rich >becomes Chinese instead". The warlords that reunified China under their dynasty, the Central Asian exodus that pushed people into China (and into Turkey as well!), the Yuan mongolian dynasty, the Manchu (Qing) etc... they all Sinicized eventually just because it was impossible to rule effectively over China without doing it. But in turn, China also incorporated a little of their culture, and so "being Chinese" morphed a little each time as well.

This is a general map from en.people.cn, so I assume it's accurate.

You can see all the recognized minorities which gives an indication as to how far you can atomize these different ethnicities in China. You can also find the Manchu on this map, recognized as an official ethnic minority, despite that the Qing was formed by Manchu invasion. Like I said, you eventually Sinicize. Manchu are as Chinese as any other Chinese, and vice versa.

Other maps I found from the BBC or Britannica lumped all these minorities on the coast as "Han" or even "Han Chinese" which shows how much politics there is behind just these classifications. They want to make Hans look like invaders instead of part of this whole process of Sinicization.

Since the DPP won I'm not entirely sure how the island has moved but I think they understand their time is counted and that's why DPP is moving away from status quo and into "actually we're taiwanese", and abandoning the mainland claims. "Taiwanese" as an identity professed by Chinese (I don't think the indigenous call themselves Taiwanese, but I'm aware of indigenous groups that are also fully comprador with the KMT that massacred them, so...) is a complete fabrication exactly to try and say they are not Chinese or different from "Chinese". It's part of a bid for full independence when they see the writing on the wall and we've seen it before historically, I'm sure.

Sure over time the two have diverged a little, but it's precisely because 'Chinese' as a nationality has retained this cultural component over ethnic/origins components that 'Taiwanese' is Chinese. If 'Taiwanese' did not fit under the umbrella term of Chinese then the 56 ethnic minorities of China would not be Chinese either, and yet they consider themselves Chinese, their compatriots consider them Chinese, the CPC considers them Chinese.

And then you start to think oh wait, that sounds like balkanization... if nobody is Chinese, then the PRC is illegitimate and China doesn't exist! And this is the key behind the push for an 'independent' Taiwan. It's suddenly not going to be about finishing the civil war anymore, it's going to be about the Han hordes of the Communist Party invading an innocent pacifist indigenous population that just wants to be independent but is not allowed self-determination by the evil communists :( (anarchists are already eating it all up in their usual "I was an imperialist for this cause before it was popular to be one!" pattern lol)

When reunification happens (which will likely happen so silently we might not even notice, because the mainland already provides Taiwan 90% of its electricity), groups indigenous to the island will likely be considered ethnic minorities, the others will be considered not a minority and thus not eligible to the special protections, and that's that. Everyone gets a PRC passport and you can freely travel between the island and the mainland.