Semi-protected edit request on 9 March 2014 

Please change: 
officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a state in East Asia.
to:
officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a country in East Asia.

also, please change:
Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. 
to:
Neighboring countries include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. 

According to the mandarin original text in the Taiwan Wikipedia page, Taiwan is a country and not a state. Also people's republic of china, Japan, Philippines are not states, they are countries.

see below:
中華民國是位於東亞的民主共和國[參 9]，為亞洲現有最早實行共和立憲制度的國家[參 10]，成立於1912年1月1日，於1971年前被廣泛承認代表中國[注 11]，現今因主要國土位置或政治因素而被通稱為「臺灣」[參 2]。
67.121.104.204  

I think you're confused in regards to the definition of state. I see that you live in California, United States, which furthers my assumptions. There is more to the word "state" than the "US state" (e.g. Texas, Missouri, etc) definition; a sovereign state is a political entity that we call Canada, or Serbia, or Cambodia. With this definition, China, Philippines and Japan are "states". The terms "state", "nation" and "country" refer to concepts which may be similar, however still have their small distinctions. In order to avoid ambiguity, it's better to refer to objects such as China, Japan, Britain, Russia, the United States, France, et cetera as sovereign states, instead of the two alternative terms. A sovereign state is largely defined in modern contexts based on Westphalian sovereignty, whilst the definitions of nation and country differ depending on various contexts.I wouldn't put too much thought on what the Chinese Wikipedia says on this issue. The Chinese language, like all languages, has its limitations in that there is no one-to-one correspondence with English political vocabulary. The English words "state", "nation" and "country" are all translated as "國" in Chinese, as Chinese does not make such a distinction. The Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of China is called "中華民國國防部" (國 = nation), the United Nations is called "聯合國" (國 = nation), the United States Department of State is called "美國國務院" (國 = state), the Commonwealth of Independent States is called "獨立國家聯合體" (國 = state),  and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is called "石油輸出國組織" (國 = country). T•C•E