The Republic of China (Chinese: 中華民國, pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó) is the name of the regime that rules China from 1912 after the fall of the imperial regime (which had ruled the country since 221 B.C.) succeeding the Qing Dynasty, which had ruled the Empire since 1644.
After signing the constitution of 1947, and signing the Shanghai Accords in 1949 ending the Chinese Civil War, the republic cemented herself in the 50's and the 60's.
The 70's and 8O's saw a rapid industrialization and liberalization of the country. Nowadays, the country has the second GDP ($30.074 trillion in 2022) after the Kingdom of America.
Flag of the RoC
| Republic of China Zhōnghuá Mínguó Timeline: Domus Iagiellonica
OTL equivalent: China (minus Tibet), Taiwan | ||||||
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| Anthem: Zhōnghuá Míngúo Gúoqígē (National Anthem of the Republic of China) |
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| Capital | Beijing | |||||
| Largest city | Shanghai | |||||
| Official languages | Standard Chinese | |||||
| Regional languages | Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang, Others | |||||
| Ethnic groups | 91.1% Han Chinese, 8.9% others | |||||
| Government | Federal Semi-Presidential Republic | |||||
| - | President | Tsai Ing-wen | ||||
| - | Prime Minister | Chen Chien-jen | ||||
| Legislature | Legislative Yuan | |||||
| GDP (PPP) | 2022 est. estimate | |||||
| - | Total | $30.074 trillion (1st) | ||||
| Currency | Yuan Renminbi | |||||
History[]
China is regarded as one of the world's oldest civilisations. Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited the country 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a Homo erectus who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000 years ago. The fossilized teeth of Homo sapiens (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 6600 BCE, at Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.
According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The Xia dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from c. 1500 BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.
The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other during the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.
Early dynastic rule[]
According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The Xia dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their oracle bone script (from c. 1500 BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.
The Shang was conquered by the Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other during the 300-year Spring and Autumn period. By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.
Imperial China[]
China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, is famed for having united the Warring States' walls to form the Great Wall of China. Most of the present structure, however, dates to the Ming dynasty.
The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., the cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.
Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.
After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and imperial examination system, constructed the Grand Canal, and patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.
Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The Tang dynasty retained control of the Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.
Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to southern China.
The Mongol conquest of China began in 1205 with the gradual conquest of Western Xia by Genghis Khan, who also invaded Jin territories. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty, which conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang led a rebellion that overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as East Africa.
The Qing conquest of the Ming and expansion of the empire[]
In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury. In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.
The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to suppress anti-Qing sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the Haijin ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation.
Fall of the Qing dynasty[]
The Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China to defeat the anti-foreign Boxers and their Qing backers. The image shows a celebration ceremony inside the Chinese imperial palace, the Forbidden City after the signing of the Boxer Protocol in 1901.
In the mid-19th century, the Qing dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the Opium Wars with Britain and France. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan. The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.
In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.
Establishment of the Republic and World War II[]
On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.
After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political maneuverings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist-led People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communists. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Russian Empire, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was handed over to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war.
Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China at this time.
Liberalization and economic growth[]
The Shanghai Accords in 1949 ended the Chinese Civil War, the republic cemented herself in the 50's and the 60's.
The 70's and 8O's saw a rapid industrialization and liberalization of the country.
The economy continued to grow in the following decades, allowing China to enter the G8 in 2000.
The country made a turn towards technology and science in the 2000's. Major firms, such as Huawei emerged. An economic and scientific rivalry against the Kingdom of America started.
The years 2010's saw the country accelerating his way towards carbon neutrality. Hundreds of wind and solar farms emerged, old generation nuclear plants were closed and gradually changed to newer, more efficient models.
Presidents of China[]
Provisional President of the Republic of China[]
- Sun Yat-sen (1 January 1912 - 10 March 1912)
- Yuan Shikai (10 March 1912 - 10 October 1913)
Government of the Republic of China (Beijing, 1913–1928)[]
- Yuan Shikai (10 October 1913 - 22 December 1915)
- Yuan Shikai (22 March 1916 - 6 June 1916)
- Li Yuanhong (7 June 1916 - 1 July 1917)
- Li Yuanhong (12 July 1917 - 17 July 1917)
- Feng Guozhang (17 July 1917 - 10 October 1918)
- Xu Shichang (10 October 1918 - 2 June 1922)
- Zhou Ziqi (2 Jun 1922 - 11 Jun 1922) (acting)
- Li Yuanhong (11 June 1922 - 13 June 1923)
- Zhang Shaozeng (13 Jun 1923 - 9 Sep 1923) (acting)
- Gao Lingwei (9 Sep 1923 - 10 Oct 1923) (acting)
- Cao Kun (10 October 1923 - 2 November 1924)
- Huang Fu (2 Nov 1924 - 24 Nov 1924) (acting)
- Duan Qirui (24 November 1924 - 20 April 1926)
- Hu Weide (20 Apr 1926 - 13 May 1926) (acting)
- Yan Huiqing (13 May 1926 - 22 Jun 1926) (acting)
- Du Xigui (22 Jun 1926 - 1 Oct 1926) (acting)
- Wellington Koo (1 Oct 1926 - 18 Jun 1927) (acting)
- Zhang Zuolin (18 June 1927 - 2 June 1928)
National Government (Nanjing, 1927–1937; Chongqing, 1937–1945; Nanjing, 1945–1947)[]
Chairmen of the Standing Committee of the National Government:[]
- Chiang Kai-shek (18 April 1927 - 15 August 1927)
- Tan Yankai (15 August 1927 - 10 October 1928)
Chairmen of the National Government (國民政府主席):[]
- Chiang Kai-shek (10 October 1928 - 15 December 1931)
- Lin Sen (15 December 1931 - 1 August 1943)
- Chiang Kai-shek (1 August 1943 - 20 May 1948)
Constitutional Government[]
crest of the RoC
- Chiang Kai-shek (20 May 1948 - 21 January 1949)
- Li Zongren (January 21, 1949 - March 1, 1950) (acting)
- Chiang Kai-shek (1 March 1950 - 5 April 1975) (first to fifth terms)
- Yen Chia-kan (6 April 1975 - 20 May 1978) (fifth term)
- Chiang Ching-kuo (20 May 1978 - 13 January 1988) (sixth and seventh terms)
- Lee Teng-hui (13 January 1988 - 20 May 1996) (seventh and eighth terms)
- Lee Teng-hui (20 May 1996 - 20 May 2000) (ninth term)
- Chen Shui-bian (20 May 2000 - 20 May 2008) (tenth and eleventh terms)
- Ma Ying-Jeou (20 May 2008 – 20 May 2016) (twelfth and thirteenth terms)
- Tsai Ing-wen (20 May 2016 – present) (fourteenth and fifteenth terms)
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