Founding Father

Sun Yat-sen, named Sun Zhong-shan or Sun Wen, was born in an ordinary peasant’s family in Cuiheng Village on November 12, 1866.when he was ten years old, Sun Yat-sen attended an oldstyle private school in Cuiheng Village. At the age of twelve, he went to Honolulu to study and returned to China at ate age of seventeen. Sun married Lu Mu-Zhen in 1884. From 1886 to 1892, Sun Yat-sen studied medicine in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and practiced medicine in Macao, Guangzhou after graduation. Mean while he also devoted himself to politics.

Because he thought the Qing government was greatly corrupt and China was in a crisis, in 1894 Sun Yat-sen submitted a memorial to Li Hong-zhang a top official of the Qing government at that time, to demand China’s total reform. His memorial however, was rejected. Later Sun moved to Honolulu and established this Xing Zhong Hui (Society for the Revival of China). The Xing Zhong Hui outlined it’s programmed as:” the expulsion of the Manchus, reveal of China, establishment of people’s government.”

In 1905, Dr.Sun united the other revolutionary bodies in existence and formed in Tokyo a new organization under the name of Tong Meng Hui (Revolutionary league). It was here that Dr. Sun Yat-sen formulated his political thought, the “Three People’s Principles — the Principle of Nationalism, the Principle of People’s livelihood.” He had sharp debates with the monarchists on such issues as to what political system China should adopt and what road China should take. From 1895-1911, Sun Yat-sen staged several armed struggles against the Qing government, but failed. Though he met with repeated failures, he was still quite optimistic about the revolution. On October 10, 1911, a named uprising broke out in Wuchang. The revolt quickly spread to other provinces of the country. A convention was held in wuhan at which the anti-Manchu forces decided to set up a provisional government and the revolutionaries succeeded in overthrowing the Qing government. This event is known in China’s history as the Revolution of 1991. On New Year’s Day, 1912, Dr Sun assumed the presidency of the newly-founded Republic of China, and thereby opened a new era in China’s history.

National flag

The “white sun in a blue sky” portion of the Republic of China’s national flag was originally designed by Lu Hao-tung, a martyr of the Chinese revolution. The 12 points of the white sun in the emblem represent the 12 two-hour periods of the day, symbolizing unceasing progress. At one level, the three colors of blue, white, and crimson stand for the Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy, and social well-being. At another level, the colors embody qualities that evoke other concepts enumerated in the Three Principles: the blue signifies brightness, purity, freedom, and thus a government that is of the people; the white–honesty, selflessness, equality, and thus a government that is by the people; and the crimson–sacrifice, bloodshed, brotherly love, thus a government that is for the people.

National anthem

The words of the ROC national anthem were first delivered as an exhortation at the opening ceremony of the Whampoa Military Academy on June 16, 1924, by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. This exhortation was designated as the Kuomintang’s (KMT) party song in 1928, after which the KMT then publicly solicited contributions for a tune to fit the words. The melody submitted by Cheng Mao-yun was the undisputed winner out of 139 contenders.

The anthem first declares the Three Principles of the People to be the foundation of the nation and guides to a world commonwealth of peace and harmony; and then calls upon the people to be brave, earnest and constant in striving to fulfill the nation’s goals.

Geography

With a total area of nearly 36,000 sq. km, Taiwan is separated from the Chinese mainland by the Taiwan Strait, which is about 220 km at its widest point and 130 km at its narrowest. The island is almost equidistant from Shanghai and Hong Kong.

The surface geology of the island varies in age from very recent alluvial deposits to early sedimentary and crystalline rocks. The structure is formed by a tilted fault block running roughly northeast to southwest along the entire length. The steep slope of this tilted block faces east and the rock mass slopes more gently to the west. This block is composed primarily of old rocks, some of which have been subjected to heat and pressure. Only one-third of the land area is arable. The mountains are mostly forested, with some minerals, chiefly coal, at the northern end.

People

The Han , the largest ethnic group in Taiwan, comprise roughly 98 percent of the ROC’s population. The remaining two percent consists of indigenous peoples from Taiwan’s nine different aboriginal tribes, as well as almost 60 other minority groups, including the Manchu, Mongolian, Uighur, Tibetan, Miao, Yi, Gerbao, and Chuang peoples.

The Han on Taiwan are usually classified into two different groups: early Han Chinese immigrants, who are often referred to as “Taiwanese,” and immigrants who moved to Taiwan with the ROC government in 1949, generally referred to as “mainlanders.” The Taiwanese group comprises 85 percent of the Han population and is often subdivided even further into the Hakka, who are mostly from Guangdong Province; and the Southern Fujianese, who are primarily from China’s southeastern province of Fujian. The Fujianese outnumbers the Hakka by approximately three to one. The second groups, mainlanders, comprise slightly less than 15 percent of the Han population. Intermarriage between all four groups–indigenous peoples, Hakkas, Southern Fujianese, and mainlanders–is quite common, so the distinguishing characteristics of each group grow fainter with the passage of time.

Language

Mandarin, the national language of the Republic of China and of the Chinese mainland, is based on the Beijing dialect. Formerly referred to as Official Speech, the Beijing dialect has had approximately 1,000 years of history as the common language of politics and commerce in China, particularly in the north.

The main unifying force of China’s many diverse dialect groups and the link with the Classical Chinese language of the ancients has always been the written system comprising tens of thousands of ideographic characters. While speakers of different Chinese dialects may assign differing pronunciations to a given character, the meaningful content of the character is, for the most part, the same for all. This explains why a speaker of one dialect may not be able to understand what a speaker of another dialect says, but can still understand what that person writes. In theory, a well-educated Cantonese speaker and a well-educated Southern Fujianese speaker could both understand an article written by a Shanghainese speaker using Chinese characters in the virtually obsolete literary language; however, if the three people took turns reading the same article aloud, listeners would hear three completely different pronunciations. Thus, literate Chinese, no matter which dialect they speak natively, share the same writing system.

Government

The ROC Constitution is based on the principles of nationalism, democracy, and social well-being formulated by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China. His political doctrine is known as the Three Principles of the People.

The Principle of Nationalism postulates the equal treatment and sovereign status for the Republic of China in the interdependent commonwealth of nations as well as equality for all ethnic groups within the nation. The Principle of Democracy assures each citizen the right to exercise political and civil liberties. The Principle of Democracy is the foundation for the organization and structure of the ROC government. The Principle of Social Well-being indicates that the powers granted to the government must ultimately serve the welfare of the people by building a prosperous economy and a just society. The three principles have extensively shaped current policies and legislation in areas ranging from education to land reforms, from social welfare to relations with mainland China, and, more recently, the extensive political and economic liberalization.

Freedom and democracy are more than just slogans in the Republic of China (ROC). They are the tangible results of constitutional government and rule of law. In the March 18, 2000, presidential election, the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate Chen Shui-bian emerged victorious with 39.3 percent of the vote in a tight three-way race.

Cross-Strait Relations

The Republic of China was founded in 1912, and it has since maintained sovereignty over the territories that have been administered by a succession of Chinese governments through the ages. The international community has referred to these territories as “China.”

Ten years after the founding of the Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party was established with the support of international communist activists. In 1949, the Chinese Communists gained control of the Chinese mainland through military force, and on October 1, 1949, they proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. In December 1949, the ROC government moved to Taiwan. Since that time, two distinct societies, with different ideologies and contrasting political, economic, and social systems, have existed simultaneously on opposite sides of the Taiwan Strait.

For many years after gaining control of the Chinese mainland, the Chinese communists sought to “liberate” Taiwan by force. Beginning in the early 1950s, they launched a series of military attacks against areas controlled by the ROC government in an effort to achieve reunification by force: the artillery bombardment of Kinmen (Quemoy) in 1958 was the largest of these attacks, with up to 60,000 artillery shells fired at Kinmen per day for a week. Beijing changed its policy toward Taiwan, after establishing diplomatic relations with the United States in 1979, and began pursuing a course of peaceful confrontation. Although references to “liberation” in propaganda concerning Taiwan were dropped in favor of the term “peaceful reunification,” Beijing has refused to renounce the use of military force to solve the “Taiwan problem.”

Looking to the future

A stable and democratic China is in the world’s best interest. The ROC government has repeatedly emphasized that its participation in the international community does not challenge the existing interests of the People’s Republic of China. The ROC must further develop its international relations to ensure its continued existence and development.

The two sides should avoid the use of force and instead apply the principles of reason, peace, reciprocity, and mutual benefit to systematically improve cross-strait relations. Only in this way can Taipei and Beijing bring the greatest possible benefit to the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and contribute to the long-term peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region.

admin on January 28th, 2010 | File Under Area & Country Studies | No Comments -