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View Full Version : Brief Introduction to the founding of the Republic of China and it's government



RollingWave
02-01-2013, 01:15 AM
(Part 1, the historical background)

A short view of the Republic of China 's founding and how it influenced it's government system.

China, being on the other side of the Euro Asian continent, was almost completely isolated from the massive leap forward by the Europeans after the age of Discovery, and it ended up in a rude awakening at the later half of the 19th century when the Europeans came knocking with technologies centuries ahead of them.

Over the course of the next half century, China saw it's economy collapse , civil war rage, and all the while foreign power continue to intrude. it was clear as day as anyone that massive changes were needed.

But because the contact with the Europeans also came with mix messages, as Europe at the time also presented all sorts of different systems in political and economic sense, so while everyone agree on change, there was very little agreement on how to do it, constitutional monarchy ? a republic? merchentailism? capitalism? etc...

But time waits for no man, as debate still raged the long time Qing ruler Cixi passed away in 1909 just days after the nominal emperor Guang Hsu . the throne ending up in the hands of a 5 year old and oversaw by his 24 year old largely inexperienced father was hardly ideal, especially since this came at the critical point where the Qing was going to undertake massive political reform, the lack of a leader that is actually convincing made this impossible.

Although revolution had been going on and off since the 20th century, non had came close to really threatening the Qing since the end of the Taiping rebellion (which wasn't exactly a revolution that claim for western ideal. despite it's claim of being Christian.) however in 1911 that changed as the Qing's attempted to make massive reform by nationalising the railways which up to that point had been a piece meal effort between local officials and wealthy merchants, this along with other unpopular reforms triggered a massive rebellion when the local garrision in central China rebelled. soon all southern states rebelled (with little cordination) and the Qing was doomed.

However, the revolution was not a coordeinated effort, this latest success was largely driven by wealthy locals out of self interest and not as much by the idealist who look into western reforms, they also had limited military capacity . at the time of the revolution a lot of the major revolutionary were still abroad . it was not exactly a successful module.

The Qing still held most of the military, and in the insuing months the combined armies of the south were clearly losing to the imperial army of Yuan Shi Kai, however at the point Yuan secretly contacted the south and stated that he is willing to help to make the Qing emperor abdicate in exchange for him being the new Republic's president. seeing little chance in defeating Yuan, while also all sensing the urgency of completing the revolution, the south gave in and accepted the offer. so the new Republic was formed, though in less than ideal circumstances.

It was not a surprise then, that after this the situation hardly improved, Yuan was obviously ambitious and soon tried to make himself emperor, which started a new round of civil war. Yuan died soon after and the country collapsed into a warlord state, the revolutionaries, lacking resource of their own, went between different warlords futilely trying to reverse this outcome.

Eventually the Revolutionaries did manage to scrape enough resource together, and they realized that the only way they could achieve something would be to build a military of their own from scratch, which they did in the 1920s and eventually started to submit the warlords one by one.

By the 1930 they were able to more or less subdue all the warlords, though by then situation have already gone worse as the Japanese invasion was now inevitable (they already took Manchuria) and there was also a communist insurgency running wild, still they managed to do some bits of reconstructing during the next few years, but then the Japanese invaded in full by 1937. and war was the only agenda until 1945.

They managed to pass a constitution and even run a national election in 1947, but only 2 years later they were already driven out of China and ended up in Taiwan, where martial law reigned until the late 80s, and only after that, nearly 50 years after the constitution was signed into place, did they actually start to run it accordingly. since then more amendment have been made to address the big change in reality (both time wise and place wise)

The ROC's government setup reflect this complex history, as influence from many different systems are readily apparent, including those of the old Chinese dynasties. The chief architect of the thinking, Dr. Sun Yat San, spent a lot of his Youth in (then still Kingdom of ) Hawaii and Hong Kong, and also in Japan, so he was probably most directly influenced by those places.

RollingWave
02-01-2013, 01:33 AM
Part 2: the government setup.

The ROC government setup today is most directly influenced by the American system, though it was not clearly as so in the beginning. But i'll give a run down of how the current system is setup.


The head of State and effective leader is the President, elected in popular votes.

Unlike most western system, the ROC system separate into 5 branches below the President, aside from the 3 common system (Executive / Legislative / Judiciary ) the ROC also adds in oversight (control) and public official regulation (Exam) as two branches, this is very largely influenced by the traditional Chinese system where these two are typically considered among the highest branches.

The Executive Branch is headed by a Prime Minister like the UK system who forms the cabinet, however after changes in the last few amendments the PM's role is largely that of a pure Executive, as he is simply nominated by the President and confirmed by the Legislature. probably one of the more suspect part of our hodgepudge system in that while the President clearly runs the Executive branch as well, he isn't the direct head of it. There are currently 9 ministry (department) level under him, although some other commision and smaller departments also exist.

Legislature now is completely ran by the Legislative Yuan (Yuan is House in Chinese). the Legislature are elected in two ways, one is direct district election, the other is a separate party vote you can cast which then divide a fix number of seat between parties based on the percentage of vote they acquire, this is to more or less give small party a chance. In the older days there was also a National Assembly which acted more like the Senate in the US, but with even greater power, however that has since been defunct as the old setup called for more Assembly member and Legislature than the US 2 houses despite a much smaller population.

Judiciary essentially work the same as the US, with the one notable exception being that we don't use the Jury system, instead adherent to the German system where Judges have the final call.

The Exam Yuan is very much a continuation of the old Chinese tradition, where picking out public officials through examination was one of the most important event of the government, the Chinese state long gave up on feudalistic picking official by birth for thousands of years and relied on examination to pick official and promote social movement. although most public official nowadays no longer have the same weight as before, it is still considered to be vastly important which was why this was separated out as it's own branch, they are incharge of the hiring / firing / promotion of anyone in public service outside of elected officials in the hopes of giving it more neutrality and not favor any particular ministry / area.

Control : likewise, as an old Chinese tradition. overseeing how these public officials are doing have long been a staple of the Chinese system , though nowadays this branch's effect seems limited at best. but they have access to all internal documents which give them a signficant advantage.