While China has become the world’s second largest economy as a result of its economic reforms and opening to the outside world, Hong Kong and Macau have been returned to China in the 1990s, but Taiwan remains to be a de facto separate political entity, refusing to be reunited with the PRC under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The separation of China and Taiwan could be traced back to the civil war between the CCP and the Kuomintang (KMT) since the 1920s. In 1949, the KMT was defeated and established its rule om island Taiwan.