Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does China actually stand to gain by invading Taiwan? Any kind of real analysis based in anything other than nationalistic fervor or fear mongering seems to indicate that they're better served by the status quo.
From what I understand, it is an affront to their regime. It’s an island of free, prosperous and democratic Chinese people. It’s a repudiation of everything the CCP stands for. In a very real sense, Taiwan is not a separate country, but a unconquered territory from the Civil War, the last bastion of the pre-1949 Republic of China, and a symbol of what could have been for all of China. Sure there are geopolitical reas…
This is really irrelevant to the conflict, which goes back long before Taiwan democratized (which was only in the late 1990s).
The conflict is relatively simple. Taiwan was a province of China, and still is a part of the Republic of China. The People's Republic of China sees itself as the successor state of the ROC, and is also seen as such by the rest of the world. That means that the PRC considers Taiwan to be part of its rightful, legal territory.
The issue of the territorial integrity of China is especially important in modern China because of the history of colonialism and invasion in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Both the Nationalists and Communists dreamed of expelling the colonial powers and warlords, reuniting China, and finally establishing a fully sovereign, independent state. The separation of Taiwan from the mainland, as a result of the Chinese civil war, is seen as the last vestige of the era in which China was weak and not unified.