Its complicated but Ill try to sum it up. China has every intention of some day unifying Taiwan. They have new trade deals as Taiwans current president Ma has set the stage to improve relations with China. This has met up with alot of opposition as secret trade deals get people worried about their little country and own culture they developed.
There is a new arms deal coming up with Taiwan from the US for the first time in 4 years so Beijing is flipping out about that.
What to look for is the 2016 election, Ma's party lost control 2 years ago or so and the presidential election is the 2016 one.
If the next president of Taiwan pushes for "independence" by official means there is no telling what China will do.
Then there are all those things going on with the islands, the man-made military islands, the expansion of sea claims but all this also involved Korea, Japan, Vietnam as well as other countries.
They should be talking about this stuff more often in the news here, its important and most Americans have no idea about the Taiwan election unless you go online and look for asian news.