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.
After
History
Civil War
After the passing of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the widely-recognized founder of the Republic of China, war broke out amongst warlords who retained control over various regional units of the Qing dynasty. While Sun was alive, the warlords were largely willing to pay lip service to his government based in Kwangchow, even though his administration was at best tenuous outside of the Kwangtung Province; after his passing, even this degree of lip service ceased, and several warlords in the north of China declared themselves to be the head of state of China.
Sun himself left no instructions for the succession of his political office, and the provisional constitution had been amended by the time of his death largely to be centred upon himself. His close associates Hu Han-min, Wang Ching-wei, and Chiang Kai-shek each sought to solidify their control over the Kwangtung government's functions. Eventually a sort of troika emerged where Hu took charge of government, Wang of party politics, and Chiang of the Kwangtung government's forces.
Meanwhile, in north China, the Peiyang administration sought to pursue a pro-Korea and anti-Japan foreign policy; in the south, the opposite was preferred. In 1928, the two main alliances joined battle in Ho-nan Province, resulting in a decisive victory for the south. With this pretext, a provisional constitution was passed that year by delegates repesenting Sun's Kuomintang, the Social Democratic Party supported by the defecting warlords of the north, and unaffiliated scholars. The national capital city once again returned to Nanking, but many major departments remained in Kwangchow.
First Sino-Korean War
Angered by the defeat of the northern warlords who were more friendly to Korea, it declared war on China in 1931. Within several months and with the aid of sympathizers, Korea gained control over much of Fon-tien Province and sent scouts to He-lung-kiang Province. A ceasefire was signed with the Chinese government in November 1930, providing that the Chinese government will not forcibly contest Korean control of Fon-tien Province as long as Korea does not further expand its control of Chinese territories.
Aforementioned scouts in He-lung-kiang Province ignored the Korean government's agreement and began to build railways and waterworks to create arable settlements in He-lung-kiang Province, populating them with political prisoners. The Chinese government protested in vain against these actions. Chiang Kai-shek, named Commissioner of Military Affairs, found this incursion to be too remote to be dealt with; the fact that most losses were sustained by the northern warlords, Chiang's enemies, also discouraged him from taking action.
Chiang's inaction caused dicontent and eventually drove him to advocate for a military response to the question of Korean occupation in 1936. By this point, however, relations with Japan had worsened, and China was forced to spend more on its navy, which would take resources away from the northeastern campaign that Chiang was advocating for.
Second Sino-Korean War
Took place from 1955 to 1957, resulting in further territorial loss including all of the provinces of Fong-tien, He-lung-kiang, and Kilin and half of the province of Ho-peh.
Demographics
The population of China is 1.2 billion as of the 2015 census.
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.
| 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.
Provinces
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 the former, a provincial government remains subject to central laws and accountable to the central government, but for the latter, it is legislatively and financially autonomous. Like the Executive Yuan, a provincial government consists of multiple ministers appointed by the President subject to the approval of the Provincial Legislature; the analogue to the Prime Minister in provinces is called a Premier.
- The Provincial Legislature is responsible for deliberating and passing bills on the provincial list and as authorized by the central government.
Municipalities
Municipalities (縣) are administrative divisions that usually encompass about 200,000 to 1,000,000 residents. Certain municipalities have upwards of 1,000,000 people due to circumstances, though the central government usually divides such large municipalities, geography permitting. The municipality possesses a mayor (縣長) and a municipal council (縣議會), which provide executive and legislative functions respectively. A municipality, like a province, is both an agency under central and provincial lists as well as an autonomous government in se over issues on the municipal list in the constitution.
Municipalities are subdivided into districts (區) and further into towns (鎮) and townships (鄉). Considering the natural scale of small villages and towns in rural China, towns and townships as low-level territorial divisions are normally restricted to 1,000 households, and the actual average is lower at 400 to 700 or so. In the case of towns, these households are more likely to be concentrated in a close area forming an urban area, and in that of rural townships, spread out over a larger area and forming smaller clusters. Thus, an average municipality may have around 100 or so towns and townships, which results in an issue of administrative difficulty, hence the establishment of districts as an intermediate administration.
Defence and public security
The Republic of China Armed Forces (中華民國國軍) consists of an Army, Navy, and Air Force and is within the exclusive portfolio of the central government, controlled and administered through the Ministry of Defence. The President is accorded the position of commander-in-chief, but all operational issues are executed by the Minister of Defence within the framework of Cabinet policy, via the Chief of Defence Staff (參謀總長), who holds ex officio the rank of Field Marshal, Admiral of the Fleet, or Air Chief Marshal depending on the incumbent's branch of service (i.e. 5-star rank).
For most of the ROC's modern history, the role of the national military has been defined as the defence of the nation's territories and citizens (if necessary) against hostile powers. This is because the force was rife with factionalism to the extent that skirmishes between units were common. To maintain unity and neutrality, it was agreed in the Defence Act of 1950 that the national military should be focused exclusively on dealing with foreign enemies and freed from dealing with internal differences (where their loyalties may be tested), as all factions could, by that time, agree upon this. Internal order and policing are made mandates for other bodies.
Also under the central government's portfolio are the Republic of China Coast Guard and other public security forces under central departments.
Owing to historical circumstance and geographic expansiveness, many provinces operate paramilitary forces. These paramilitary forces may be lightly or heavily armed, some provinces employing arsenals that are identical to that of the national military. They also liaise with the Ministry of Defence and shared in domestic military duties and coast guard functions on the coast, since the central government restricted the role of the national military to external defence.
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.
Transport
Railway
The railway system is the primary long-distance mode of transport, both passenger and freight, in China as the national highway system remains inadequate by modern standards. To date, Chinese railways remain reliant on diesel adhesion, while steam engines are still in service to some extent. Only small segments of the railway system has been electrified on an experimental basis.
By law, all inter-provincial railways are owned by the central government and operated by the Ministry of Railways. Provinces may build and operate railways that do not connect to the national network or extend into other provinces: the Taiwan Railway network is an example of provincial network that is profitable.
In passenger services, the National Railway provides first, second, and third class coaches. Until the early 2000s, third class coaches had wooden benches; second class coaches had more spacious stuffed seats; first class coaches were even more spacious and, by developed country standards, luxurious. The base fare ratio between the classes is 1:2:4, but after excise and VAT, the ratio is closer to 1:2.5:6.5.
Economy
After the IKW, the Chinese economy was in tatters and unsuited to a peacetime economy. Moreover, the overissue of fiat money resulted in its devaluation by about 99% over ten years. Further fiscal indiscipline resulted in the hyperinflation of 1946 through 1948, which was rectified by putting the currency on the gold standard.
Poverty reduction
After the Second Sino-Korean War, China entered a state of endemic poverty, described as extreme and totally unprecedented by many observers. To support a systematic effort to reduce poverty, in 1950, the Ministry of Statistics (主計部) launched a quadrennial Economic Survey where households were classified qualitative indicators into non-poor and poor households. If a household met a criteria representing a comfortable lifestyle, it was deemed middle-class, and if not, as poor. The 1950 survey revealed that over 99% of households in China fell into the "poor" category; the long-term aim was to reduce the poverty rate to 50% in the next 30 years. However, the poverty rate dropped by only 10% by 1980 (89.83% poor).
The qualitative metric was selected because drastic variations in price levels caused difficulties in comparing income across the whole of China. In the 1950s, what may be a comfortable income in a rural setting could not afford the nearly same things in major cities. Provisions are also made for differences in living arrangements between regions. To be deemed non-poor in 1950, a household should have the following:
- Lifestyle: household will typically be characterized by employment of domestic servants for cooking, tidying, heavy work, and care for children. Household has no difficulty in maintaining wardrobe for all its members or in enjoying food prepared with an eye for refinement at ordinary meals. The principal source of income of the household should not involve manual labour.
- Housing: household should reside in a house made of good and insulating materials and free of structural defects and leaks, with sufficient space for each member of the household so that there be no more than two occupants in an ordinary-sized bedroom. House should have heating where the climate requires it. House should have a dedicated area for cooking that is not the living area. If there is livestock, these should be kept in a separate pen outside of the living area.
- Transport: household should be in possession of either a motor car or coach drawn by animal, or alternatively hire a pulled rickshaw on a regular basis. Family should be able to support regular travel by railway where present.
- Education: household should ensure all its members are literate and numerate and have no difficulty in supporting one or more members studying overseas for an advanced degree.
- Modernity: where available, household should enjoy running water and electricity. Where electricity is available, household should possess a television set, radio, and other electric appliances. Where available, the house should be connected to a sewage system and have flushing toilets; where not available, the household should employ the services of night soil men.
Propaganda efforts
To serve as a beacon of success and foreign reputation, China set up the Public Television Broadcasting Service (PTB) in 1946 even though there were fewer than 500 functional television sets in the entire catchment area of the PTB. In 1958, the Color Television Broadcasting Service (CTB) began transmission to about 300 colour television sets, mostly in government offices and theatres. The Chinese government printed pamphlets about such technological advancements, but many rural communities would not enjoy television reception into the 1990s. It was sarcastically noted in the press that there were far more pamphlets about television sets than television sets themselves.