Taiwan in recent years has garnered geopolitical intrigue in both the eastern and western press. Its history dates back more than 8,000 years when Taiwanese aborigines (原住民) inhabited the island. Perhaps another factor stoking eastern chatter is the fact that Taiwan's aborigines are Austronesian peoples, with linguistic and genetic ties to other Austronesian ethnic groups, such as  Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia,  Oceania and the Philippines and not Han Chinese. In 1544 the island is sighted and named Ilha Formosa (Beautiful Island) by the Portuguese

The New Taiwan Dollar, often denoted by TWD, is the official currency of the Republic of China (ROC), commonly referred to as Taiwan. The Qing Dynasty first annexed Taiwan in 1683 as an area of Fujian province. During this time, Chinese Taels were used as currency. When China ceded Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895, the Japanese issued Taiwan Yen banknotes at par with the Japanese yen. Proceeding Japan's defeat in World War II, Taiwan was returned to China, which at that time was ruled by the government of the Republic of China. Within a year, the Republic of China's government took over the Bank of Taiwan and issued Taiwanese Dollars, replacing the Japanese Taiwan Yen at a simple exchange rate of one to one. Due to the corruption of the Governor-General of Taiwan, Chen Yi, Taiwan suffered severe inflation in the late 1940s. It was also reported that the Bank of Taiwan under ROC administration did not actually keep accurate records of the total issuance, and that it printed more notes than was legally allowed. As inflation grew worse, the government issued banknotes with higher and higher denominations up to one million dollars in an attempt to solve this issue. The New Taiwan Dollar was introduced in 1949 to replace the old Taiwan Dollar at a 40,000-to-1 ratio. The first goal of the New Taiwan Dollar was to end the hyperinflation that had overwhelmed Taiwan and Mainland China. A few months later, the Chinese communists defeated the Republic of China's government. In 2000, the New Taiwan Dollar became the official currency of the Republic of China and is no longer secondary to the older Taiwan Dollar. During the same time period, the Central Bank of China began issuing New Taiwan Dollar banknotes directly.