Republic of China

The Republic of China (Chinese language: 中華民國), also known as China, is a state in East Asia. Describe national borders.

The Republic of China was officially founded after the Forty-Eight Revolution (辛亥革命) in Mo-chiang on October 9 – 10, 1911. After the ruling Manchu or Tartar dynasty abdicated in favour of the Republic, it was briefly united under the Nanking government until a new government was formed by Yuan Shih-kai in Peking in 1912. Yuan attempted to declare himself emperor, while most of the provinces opposed him, and after his death the country was embroiled in civil war. The country was again united in 1928 under a one-party dictatorship by the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party under the pretext of a guided democracy. One-party rule officially ended with the enactment of the 1947 constitution.

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Administrative divisions

The Republic of China is officially divided into 21 provinces, 13 special municipalities, and 2 territories. The provinces are further divided into 97 prefectures, 879 municipalities, and 55,720 townships.

First-level subdibisions of China

21 provinces (18 governed wholly or partly)
Kiang-su 江蘇	Che-kiang 浙江	Shan-tung 山東	Shan-si 山西	Ho-pei 河北	Ho-nan 河南
San-si 陝西	Hu-pei 湖北	Hu-nan 湖南	An-hui 安徽	Kiang-si 江西	Fukien 福建
Taiwan 臺灣	Kwang-tung 廣東	Kwang-si 廣西	Szechuan 四川	Yun-kwei 雲貴	Sinkiang 新疆
Fong-tien 奉天	Chilin 吉林	He-lung-kiang 黑龍江
13 special municipalities (10 governed wholly)
Nanking 南京	Peking 北平	Hankou 漢口	Si-an 西安	Kwangchow 廣州	Chungking 重慶
Shanghai 上海	Tientsin 天津	Tsingtao 青島	Taipei 臺北	Ta-lien 大連	Harbin 哈爾濱
Shenyang 瀋陽
2 territories
Mongolia 蒙古	Tibet 西藏

After the Warlord Era, the Nanking-based National Government reversed course on a policy of shrinking and splitting provinces and instead began to merge or enlarge them. It seems a desire to ensure ethnic Han majority in each province best explains the policy, though the official policy attributes these mergers to encouragement of economic development by putting less developed areas and major cities together. As a result, the Jehol and Syue-yuen provinces were merged into Ho-peh, Chahar back into Shan-si, and Ning-hsia and Tsing-hai into Kan-su in 1945. Then the enlarged Kan-su was merged with San-si Province in 1948, creating the largest province in China.

The provinces of Fong-tien, Chilin, and Heh-lung-kiang have been under the administration of the Korean Empire since the end of the war, and centrally there is a Northeast Regional Executive Authority (東北行政長官公署) managing residual affairs (like resettlement in the interior) remotely. Parts of Ho-peh, Szechuan, Shan-si, and San-si are under the Chinese Soviet Republic and the People's Democratic Chinese Soviet Republic. There are thus 19 provinces that are fully or partly under the administration of the Chinese central government.

The territories of Mongolia and Tibet possess central government-like autonomy in matters save for foreign affairs and defence. Their legal systems are also customary and peculiar to them. The central government's Mongolia Office (蒙古委員會) and Tibet Office (西藏委員會) are responsible for liaising with the respective territorial governments. China had accepted the independence of Mongolia in 1946 but recanted this in 1951, following a non-objection letter from the USSR; legally, Mongolia's independence is considered void ab initio in China.

Government and politics

The Republic of China is a unitary state where local governments possess certain powers protected by the Constitution. The powers of the central and levels of government is set forth in the Constitution in four lists:

• The central list consists of powers like diplomacy, defence, currency etc. which are subject to the exclusive regulation and implementation by the central government. Provinces and municipalities cannot be held responsible (financially or otherwise) for this list.
• The discretionary list, the largest, consists of many economic, social, and legal sectors that are subject to central regulation but may be devolved to the provinces or municipalities for implementation, with varying degrees of local enablement.
• The provincial list contains powers exclusively provincial. This list is comparatively restricted and contains mainly the authority to realize an instance within a national framework in the discretionary list; transport, agriculture, fisheries, animal husbandry, waterworks, and public works, where within a single province, are exclusively provincial. By its inclusion on the provincial list, a province is guaranteed a certain minimum of autonomy and fiscal responsibility in that policy area.
• The municipal list is very similar to the provincial list and mainly concern matters that occur within a single municipality.

Central government

• The Constituent Assembly is normally elected and convoked every six years to elect the President and Vice President. At the request of the Legislative Yuan, it is also dissolved and re-elected to ratify changes to the country's constitutional law and other ad hoc plebescites, for which a fresh mandate from the constituents is judged required.

• Elected every six years, the President is the largely-ceremonial head of state who holds the ceremonial power to send diplomats, approve treaties, promulgate laws and ordinances, appoint and remove officials, confer honours, declare war and peace, grant pardons, as well as the status of the commander-in-chief of forces. All can only be exercised with the countersignature of the Prime Minister or with a resolution of the Legislative Yuan. The Vice President, elected on a separate ticket, does not possess independent powers and stands in for the President when the latter is incapacitated, under impeachment, or recalled.

• The Executive Yuan or Cabinet, under the republic's revised parliamentary system, is the chief executive authority politically responsible to the elected Legislative Yuan. It comprises of the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and ministers with and without portfolio. The Prime Minister designate is nominated by the President and approbated by the Legislative Yuan, while all other Cabinet members are nominated by the Prime Minister designate and appointed by the President. Unlike in a parliamentary system, Cabinet has a weak veto power (can be overriden with a simple majority after three months), cannot dissolve the legislature prematurely, and also are not elected legislators.
  • Under the Executive Yuan are the executive departments of the Chinese government. As of 2024, there are the Ministries of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Defence, Industry, Commerce, Transport, Railways, Communications, Justice, Education, Environment, Culture, Labour, Public Works, Agriculture, and Statistics; Mongolia and Tibet Offices; Expatriot Commission; and numerous other bodies whose heads are not ministers.
• The Legislative Yuan is the unicameral parliament at the central level, elected directly by the country's citizens every three years. It has power to make laws that are on the exclusive and shared list of policy areas set forth by the Constitution at its own and the Executive Yuan's initiative. The legislative body also control the central government's budget, grants approvals to the Prime Minister designate as nominated by the President, approves treaties, declares war and peace, etc. Exceptionally, it may also initiate constitution amendment bills and convoke a special Constituent Assembly for this purpose.
• The Judicial Yuan is a constitutional court in se and holds certain supervisory powers over other courts and the appointment and discipline of judges. This organ consists of 1 Chief Justice (司法院長) and 15 Puisne Justices (大法官). Under the supervision of the Judicial Yuan are the Supreme Court, Supreme Administrative Court, and numerous other tribunals of special jurisdiction. The Chief Justice and Puisne Justices are nominated by the President and approbated by the Control Yuan.
• The Examination Yuan is an independent commission overseeing the training, appointment, appraisal, and remunerations of public servants. In the main, personnel affairs of the other government branches are handled in the first instance by themselves, while the Examination Yuan serves as a check against mismanagement or abuse. For example, if an agency seeks to create and fill a new position, its role and qualifications are submitted for the Examination Yuan's professional judgement; if it seeks to promote an existing official, the Examination Yuan will decide if the they have met appraisal standards and are qualified with reference to the new position.
• The Control Yuan is an indirectly-elected body functioning as an ombudsman and prosecutor for all levels of government. It investigates allegations of mismanagement and corruption but does not punish offenders directly. Members of the Control Yuan are elected by provincial legislatures every eight years.

Local government

A two-tier form of local government, comprising of province and municipality, is provided for in the Constitution. According to it, a provinces and municipalities are to convoke constituent assemblies and ratify their respective basic laws, setting forth the basic political structure in the locality. The constitution's regulations on local government is further amended by the Basic Act of Local Government, a constitutional amendment.

The 1947 Basic Act made considerable concessions in democratic representation in the interest of stability and permitted indirectly-elected, appointed, and bicameral legislatures. Generally, these measures enhanced municipal councils' ability to control provincial politics, while municipal councils were often controlled by prominent or wealthy cliques well-connected to the central government. The 1972 Basic Act made it mandatory for at least one chamber of the provincial legislature to be directly elected, and a further amendment in 1975 curtailed the provincial government's power in suspending constitutional rights and liberties during natural disasters and other emergencies.

The specific portfolios of central, provincial, and municipal governments are also regulated at the constitutional level, with such matters as diplomacy and defence reserved to the central government. There is a considerable list of portfolios (the "shared list") subject to central legislation but may be delegated for varying degrees of provincial and municipal implementation, such as further levels of local government, forestry, mines, commerce, banking, sailing, fisheries, colonization, transport, land use, labour law, social security, policing, hygiene, insurance, artifacts, etc.

Provincial government

Each province in the Republic of China posseses a provincial government and legislature, but not localized analogues of the Judicial, Examination, or Control Yuan.

• The Provincial Government is both a subordinate of the central government's authority on the discretionary list and an independent executive for the provincial list. For matters on the discretionary list, a provincial government remains subject to central laws and accountable to the central government, but for matters on the provincial list, it possesses autonomous authority. Like the Executive Yuan, a provincial government consists of multiple ministers appointed by the President subject to the approval of the Provincial Legislature.

Defence

Provincial security forces

Owing to historical circumstance and geographic expansiveness, many provinces operate security forces, usually under a Department of Internal Security. These paramilitary forces may be lightly or heavily armed, with some provinces employing arsenals that are identical to that of the national military. The PDISes were considered part of the portfolio of the central Ministry of the Interior, though they also liaised with the Ministry of Defence and shared in military duties in the interior and coast guard functions on the coast. The personnel balance between the national military (the "khaki force") and provincial security forces (the "black force") was set at 1:1 in the 40s through 60s.

The maintenance of a provincial security force was mandatory for all provinces until 1971, when most of the interior provinces had agreed that such duty (and cost) should be borne by the central government. A provincial approach to security forces was found unsatisfactory usually because inter-provincial co-operation was difficult and because by the 1970s there were few threats justifying a highly-militarized (and costly) force to be funded by each province, at least in China-proper. Thus, in 1975, the eleven provinces of Shan-tung, Ho-pei, Ho-nan, Kiang-su, Che-kiang, An-hui, Fu-kien, Kwang-tung, Kiang-hsi, Hu-nan, and Hu-pei reformed their Security Command to have a far more restricted and specialized role, usually as back-up for local police.

Taiwan Department of Internal Security was particularly longlasting and remained the island's principal armed force until 1998, since the central Ministry of Defence repeatedly delayed the inclusion of Taiwan into the national defence structure owing to cost.