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Originally Posted by Quixote
^ Correct. The Chinese Civil War essentially never really ended. The defeated KMT didn't surrender but rather simply fled to Taiwan; the CCP won the battle of the mainland, but not the war over China. The Japanese ceded Taiwan to the KMT-led government of the Republic of China, which was based on the mainland at the time. Taiwan isn't any more of a "rogue province" of the mainland than the mainland is a breakaway state of Taiwan. Actually, the ROC if anything has more of a claim to China because it has controlled both the mainland and Taiwan. The difference is that the PRC is a country of 1.3 billion people while Taiwan is home to only 24 million people, and that the international community doesn't formally recognize Taiwan as an independent sovereign state. The PRC conflates One-China principle with One-China policy. They're not the same thing.
As for your first question, Taiwanese people (or at least the ones I know and have met) don't refer to themselves as "Chinese" in terms of origin, but will when it comes to ethnicity. It's no different than Quebecois viewing themselves as "French-Canadian," their culture being distinct but clearly a Francophone culture.
The CCP is the most evil governing entity there is. Brokering peace talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran (trying to appear as mediator, but really meant to rile the US), encouraging an end to the Russia/Ukraine war (even though China supplied dual-use technologies and was basically Russia's economic lifeline), and going on and on about not meddling in international affairs when it aided the Myanmar military coup, and continues to try to hack into US intelligence/defense systems and sow disinformation across social media. At least Russia (mostly) doesn't pretend to be something it's not.
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To me, it's not inconceivable that the CCP could eventually lose its grip on power, and when the day comes when the Mainland Chinese population wants to move forward to something else, Taiwan and the mainland could reunite under the democratic RoC government of present-day Taiwan.
I find that already more likely than the scenario of a CCP conquest of a fortified, rich, high-tech, heavily armed, hostile island.
i.e. if you told me that in the late 21st century, Taiwan and Mainland China are again one single country, I would probably bet on "the CCP has collapsed and the Chinese have switched to democracy".
(I'd also make the same bet for Korea: if a reliable crystal ball told me there's only one unified Korea in 50 years, my best bet wouldn't be "the North has conquered the South".)