Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen has told the BBC that China needs to "face reality" and show the island "respect".

She was re-elected for a second term on Saturday, winning by a landslide after a campaign in which she focused heavily on the rising threat from Beijing.

The Chinese Communist Party has long claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and the right to take it by force if necessary.

Ms Tsai insisted that the sovereignty of the self-governing island was not in doubt or up for negotiation.

His party traces its roots to the defeated nationalists in the Chinese civil war, who fled to Taiwan and continued to see the island as part of a greater China from which they had been usurped.

Usurp take (a position of power or importance) illegally or by force.

• Ousted

• Overthrown

• Topple

• Depose

• Take over

• Remove

De facto - In fact
existing or holding a specified position in fact but not necessarily by legal right.

China insists on its acceptance as a prerequisite for building economic ties with Taiwan, precisely because doing so is an explicit denial of its existence as a de facto island state.

For President Tsai's critics, her stance is needlessly provocative, one that only risks increasing the very danger she warns about - open hostility.

But she says she has shown restraint. She has, for example, stopped short of the formal declaration of independence - amending the constitution and changing the flag - that some in her Democratic Progressive Party would like.

Restraint

• a measure or condition that keeps someone or something under control.

• Self control

"But [for] more than three years, we have been telling China that maintaining a status quo remains our policy... I think that is a very friendly gesture to China."