system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What do people mean when they say there are two China's?

I briefly read a comment somewhere on reddit where the person said there where to China's. What did he mean by that?
gpt
There are two countries which claim to be "China". There's the "Republic of China" (ROC) and the "People's Republic of China" (PRC).

The PRC is the one that actually controls what you'd normally call China. It controls that massive territory in mainland Asia, plus the Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong.

The ROC only controls Taiwan and a few surrounding islands. Most people would probably just call this country Taiwan rather than China, but officially they claim to be the legitimate government of mainland China too.

This all happened because before and after WW2 there was a civil war between the Communists and the ruling Nationalists. The Communists managed to take over the mainland and declare it the PRC, and the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. After a while most of the rest of the world decided to accept the PRC as the legitimate government of China, and on paper don't recognise Taiwan as a separate country.