The Austronesians of the main island lived on a couple of other islands around the mainland, but their inhabitance did not match 1-to-1 with the borders of the province of Taiwan. I agree with you that there was a country (and a nation) that the indigenous Austronesians of the region comprise, but that county is not Taiwan and that nation is not Taiwanese.
Only semantics really.
The Ming invaded Formosa to get rid of foreign invaders. That wasnโt in the late 19th century. The Dutch surrendered in 1662.
This was a naval campaign involving a few outposts and never did anything about the majority of the island that was self governed by the native population, despite European and Chinese interference. But you are right that as a backwater it wasn't really considered to be worth the hassle at the time.
This changed in 1874 as a reaction to a brief Japanese invasion, and the subsequent subjugation of the native population was indeed a settler colonial project by the Chinese that was continued by the Japanese when they took over in 1895. The Europeans also meddled with the status during the Sino-French war in 1883/84, but it was quite inconsequential.
The Han Chinese occupation of the island is a relationship of settler colonialism. The Austronesians are the indigenous. The Han Chinese that live in the province today are not entitled to a distinct national self-determination.
You are so close to getting it ๐ Taiwan was always an independent nation subject to various settler colonial efforts by the Chinese and others. The Chinese have no claim over the island whatsoever, neither the current administration of the mainland, nor the Kuomintang when they invaded and settled there.
I would LOVE to see to Taiwan decolonized, the place names of the Austronesians reestablished, the nation of Austronesians self-determined and self-governing.
And how exactly does further colonization by the Chinese mainland help with that goal? The Taiwanese nation is on the slow way of doing so, but they chose the peaceful way of integrating with the Han Chinese that settled there after WW2. Your focus on the specific Austronesian ethnicity is IMHO extremely racist, and restoring them as the sole inhabitants would be nothing short of a genocide of a large part of the current population that chose peaceful democratic coexistence in the last couple of decades.