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ROC Presidential Election, 2008

ROC presidential election, 2008

The Election for the 12th-term President and Vice-President of the Republic of China (Chinese: 第十二任中華民國總統副總統選舉) will be held in March 2008 (but as is customary in Taiwanese elections, the date will probably not be determined until late 2007). The election will be by direct popular vote; a simple plurality is required to win. According to the Constitution of the Republic of China, all citizens of the Republic of China of at least 20 years of age and with household registration in the "Free Area of the Republic of China" (Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, etc.) will be eligible to vote. There is, however, ongoing discussion on lowering the voting age to 18 years and permitting absentee ballots for overseas Chinese and Taiwanese businessmen in mainland China (under the current rules, all voters must travel to their registered precincts to vote). This is the fourth direct election for the president of the Republic of China.

Candidates

The incumbent President Chen Shui-bian is barred from running due to term limits. While the election is still years away, several persons have been speculated as potential candidates: Pan-Green Coalition:
- Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
  - Frank Hsieh, current premier of the Republic of China
  - Su Tseng-chang, former chairman of the DPP
  - Annette Lu, current vice president of the Republic of China
  - Yu Shyi-kun, current Secretary-General in the Office of the President Pan-Blue Coalition:
- Kuomintang (KMT), also known as Nationalist Party
  - Ma Ying-jeou, current mayor of Taipei and chairman of the KMT
  - Wang Jin-pyng, current president of the Legislative Yuan and former vice-chairman of the KMT
- People First Party (PFP)
  - James Soong, current chairman of the PFP The Taiwan Solidarity Union, the DPP's junior partner in the Pan-Green Coalition, is not expected to name a candidate. The ability of the Pan-Blue Coalition to name a unified ticket is less certain. In the 2000 presidential election, the KMT nominated Lien Chan and James Soong (who was expelled from the KMT and would form the PFP after the election), ran as an independent on a seperate ticket. Together they garnered 59.9% of the vote, but lost to the DPP's Chen Shui-bian who won 39.3% of the vote. This split in the electorate was widely seen to have led to Chen's victory, and in the 2004 presidential election, Lien and Soong ran on a combined ticket (with Lien for president and Soong for vice president). Though widely expected to win the election on the basis of their combined vote totals in 2000, they still lost by 0.22% of the vote. Following the Ma Ying-jeou's landslide victory over Wang Jin-pyng in the 2005 KMT chairmanship election and the KMT's landslide victory over the DPP in the 2005 3-in-1 local elections, Ma is heavily favored for the Pan-Blue nomination. With the PFP's dismal showing in the 2004 legislative election and the 2005 3-in-1 local elections, there is increasing pressure for the PFP to merge with the KMT. The PFP announced on December 12 that it would merge into the KMT in two phases, the first being completed by the end of January 2006. The most likely scenario under which Pan-Blue is unable to field a common candidate is if Soong demands to run as president over Ma. On the eve of the 2005 chairmanship election, Soong had made a televised endorsement of Ma's opponent Wang Jin-pyng. Another scenario is if the PFP, if it has not yet merged with the KMT, demands a place on the combined ticket and the KMT refuses and decides that both presidential and vice presidential nominees should be KMT members. The third party in the Pan-Blue Coalition, the New Party, has largely integrated itself into the KMT (it fielded all but one if its members under the KMT banner in the 2004 legislative elections), and is not expected to either name its own ticket or demand to be placed on the ticket (unlike the PFP's Soong, no New Party politician has the political stature to be touted in the media as a potential presidential candidate).

Issues

As is common with Taiwanese elections, a major issue of the campaign will be over the future of the political status of Taiwan and maintaining good cross-straits relations. While the DPP favors eventual Taiwan independence and the KMT favors eventual Chinese reunification, both sides are expected to campaign for maintaining the status quo (as they did in 2004) in order to attract centrist voters. The strategy of both sides, as was the case in 2004, will be to persuade voters that it can best maintain the status quo and protect Taiwan from an invasion by the People's Republic of China. While the TSU favors immediate moves to establish a Taiwanese state, the DPP under Chen Shui-bian has so far taken a more moderate position regarding independence. At the same time the Chen administration has moved to promote a separate Taiwanese identity and give official recognition to Taiwan's de facto independence from the mainland such as by equating Taiwan with the Republic of China. The front-runners for the DPP nomination are all considered moderates like Chen Shui-bian. The KMT party line is against one country, two systems, but is supportive dialogue with the Communist Party of China under the "1992 Consensus." The DPP, in contrast, opposes recognizing One China (a prerequisite set by the PRC for negotiations), and no talks have occurred under the Chen administration. The KMT also supports immediately opening up the three links with mainland China, which have been stalled by the DPP administration. Another issue to be discussed in the years before the election is constitutional reform. President Chen Shui-bian had pledged in his second inaugural address to draft a new constitution by 2006 to take effect upon the inauguration of the 12th-term president in 2008. This is opposed by the Pan-Blue Coalition, which seeks only changes through amendments to the existing document. A constitutional reform package was passed in 2005 with cross-party support, while the "Constitutional Reform Committee" proposed by President Chen to draft the new Constitution has never been formed. It appears, that with Pan-Blue controlling the Legislative Yuan until at least February 2008 (following the 2007 legislative election) and few actions being taken by the president for drafting a new Constitution, there will be no new Constitution for 2008. Category:Elections in Taiwan (Republic of China) Category:2008 elections

Chinese language

The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hànyǔ, 华语/華語, Huáyǔ or 中文, Zhōngwén) forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the people in the world speak some form of Chinese as their native language, making it the language with the most native speakers. The terms Chinese language and Chinese can both refer to spoken Chinese or written Chinese. Spoken Chinese is tonal. Regional variation between different variants/dialects is comparable to that of, for instance, the Romance language family; many variants of spoken Chinese are different enough to be mutually incomprehensible (see Is Chinese a language or family of languages? below). For spoken Chinese, there are between six and twelve main regional groups (depending on classification scheme), including Mandarin, Cantonese, Fujianese and Hakka. However, variants of spoken Chinese almost always use the same written form (with occasional dialect-specific characters, such as in Cantonese). Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, united Chinese writing in the 3rd century BC by setting standard written forms for which there had previously been many regional variations. Before the 20th century, the common written form was Literary Chinese (Classical Chinese), which no one spoke as a mother tongue. In the early 20th century, the baihuawen movement pushed the birth of the new written form, Vernacular Chinese, based on dialects of Mandarin. In the meantime, dialect-specific characters have contintued to develop primarily in Cantonese, but also occasionally in other dialects. The Chinese language, spoken in the form of Standard Mandarin, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore (together with English, Malay, and Tamil). Chinese—de facto, in spoken form, Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (alongside English, Arabic, French, Russian, and Spanish). Spoken in the form of Standard Cantonese, Chinese is one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Among Chinese diaspora, Cantonese is the most common language one can hear in Chinatowns, thanks to early immigrants from Southern China. However, the rise of Northern and Taiwanese immigrants has led to the increase in the use of Mandarin and various Min dialects. Min The terms and concepts used by Chinese to separate spoken language from written language are different from those used in the West, because the political and social development was different in China compared to Europe. Whereas Europe fragmented into smaller nation-states after the fall of the Roman Empire, whose identities were often defined by language, China was able to preserve cultural and political unity through the same period, and maintained a common written language throughout its entire history, despite the fact that its actual diversity in spoken language has always been comparable to that of Europe. As a result, Chinese makes a sharp distinction between "written language" (wén; 文) and "spoken language" (yǔ; 语/語). The concept of a distinct and unified combination of written and spoken forms of language is therefore much stronger in the West than in China.

Spoken Chinese

Chinese spoken language The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in order of population size are:
- Mandarin 北方 or 官話/官话 (shown in the map as divided into East and West groups, but also includes the Jianghuai and Huguang areas depicted in the map)
- Wu 吳/吴 (Shanghainese)
- Cantonese 粵/粤
- Min Family 閩/闽, further divided into 5 to 7 subdivisions, all mutually unintelligible.
- Xiang 湘
- Hakka 客家
- Gan 贛/赣 In parentheses above are the culturally dominant or representative dialects of each language or dialect group today. Chinese linguists have recently distinguished 3 more groups from the traditional seven:
- Jin 晉/晋 from Mandarin
- Hui 徽 from Wu
- Pinghua 平話/平话 from Cantonese There are also many smaller groups that are not yet classified, such as: Danzhou dialect, spoken in Danzhou, on Hainan Island; Xianghua (乡话), not to be confused with Xiang (湘), spoken in western Hunan; and Shaozhou Tuhua, spoken in northern Guangdong. See List of Chinese dialects for a comprehensive listing of individual dialects within these large, broad groupings. There is also Standard Mandarin, the official standard language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, and Singapore. Pronunciation of Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, which is the dialect of Mandarin as spoken in Beijing, with vocabulary largely based on dialects of Mandarin, and grammar and syntax on vernacular Chinese. The governments intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. It is therefore used in government, in the media, and in instruction in schools. There is much controversy around the terminology used to describe the subdivisions of Chinese: some people call Chinese a language and its subdivisions dialects, while others call Chinese a language family and its subdivisions languages. Although Dungan is very closely related to Mandarin, not many people consider it "Chinese", because it is written in Cyrillic and spoken by people outside China who are not considered Chinese in any sense. It is common for speakers of Chinese to be able to speak several varieties of the language. Typically, in southern China, a person will be able to speak Standard Mandarin, the local dialect, and occasionally a more general regional dialect, such as Cantonese. Such polyglots frequently code switch between Standard Mandarin and the local dialect, depending on the situation. A person living in Taiwan, for example, may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Standard Mandarin and Taiwanese, and this mixture is considered socially appropriate under many circumstances. In Hong Kong, it is not unusual for people to speak Cantonese and English, and sometimes Mandarin. In the sense that the written language is based on Standard Mandarin and the dialects are mostly spoken but not written, the situation in China is a complex and interesting case of diglossia.

Is Chinese a language or a family of languages?

Spoken Chinese comprises many regional and often mutually unintelligible variants. Linguistically, the situation is comparable to that of Romance languages, which are mutually unintelligible but all derive from Latin and so share many common underlying features. However, the socio-political context of Chinese language is quite different from that of European languages. In Europe, political fragmentation gave rise to independent states roughly the size of Chinese provinces. This generated a political desire to create separate cultural and literary standards to differentiate nation-states and standardize the language within a nation-state. In China, a single cultural and literary standard (Classical Chinese and later, Vernacular Chinese) continued to exist while the spoken language continued to diverge between different cities and counties, much as European languages diverged, due to the scale of the country, and the obstruction of communication by geography. For example, mountainous South China displays more linguistic diversity than the flat North China. In parts of south China, a major city's dialect may be marginally intelligible to close neighbours. For instance, Wuzhou is about 120 miles upstream from Guangzhou, but its dialect is more like Standard Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou, than is that of Taishan, 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou and separated by several rivers from it (Ramsey, 1987). The diverse Chinese spoken forms and common written form comprise a very different linguistic situation from that in Europe. In Europe, linguistic differences sharpened as the language of each nation-state was standardized. For example, a farmer on the French side of the border would start to model his speech and writing after Paris while his neighbour on the Spanish side after Madrid. The use of local speech became erroneous. In China, standardization of spoken dialects was weaker, and mostly due to cultural influence. Although, as with Europe, dialects of regional political or cultural capitals were still prestigious and widely used as the region's lingua franca, their linguistic influence depended more on the capital's status and wealth than entirely on the political boundaries of the region. China's linguistic situation is more similar to India's. Although India was historically not as unified as China, parts of it speaking multiple languages have long been united in various states, and many of its languages were not standardized until the last few decades through political centralization. Like Classical Chinese, Sanskrit long played a role as common written language. Unlike Classical Chinese, its descendants are recognized as separate languages, 18 of which are official national languages. Many Chinese languages do not have sharp boundaries. As with many areas that were linguistically diverse for a long time, it is not always clear whether the speech of a particular area of China should be considered a language in its own right or a dialect of another. The Ethnologue lists a total of [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90151 14], but the number varies between seven and seventeen depending on how strict the intelligibility criterion is. For Chinese people, regional linguistic differences are less important than cultural or nationalistic similarity. They generally consider Chinese a single language, partly because of the common written language. They refer to dialects as the speech of a location, for example Beijing dialect is (北京話/北京话), the speech of Beijing, and Shanghainese is (上海話/上海话), the speech of Shanghai. Often laypeople are not aware that various "dialects" are categorized into "languages" based on mutual intelligibility, though in areas where language varies greatly (such as the southeast) people do group dialects into categories like Wu or Hakka. There is a tendency to regard dialects as equal variations of a single Chinese language, even though many parts of north China are quite homogeneous in language, unlike parts of south China. As with the concept of Chinese language itself, the divisions among dialects are mostly geographical rather than based on linguistic distance. For example, Sichuan dialect is considered distinct from Beijing dialect in the same way that Cantonese is, although linguists consider Sichuan dialect and Beijing dialect Mandarin dialects, unlike Cantonese. The idea of single language has major political overtones, and explains the amount of emotion over this issue. The idea of Chinese as a language family may suggest that China consists of several different nations, challenge the notion of a single Han Chinese "race", and legitimize secessionist movements. This is why some Chinese are uncomfortable with it, while supporters of Taiwan independence tend to be strong promoters of Min- and Hakka-language education. Furthermore, for some, suggesting that Chinese is more correctly described as multiple languages implies that the notion of a single Chinese language and a single Chinese state or nationality is backward, oppressive, artificial, and out of touch with reality. However, the links between ethnicity, politics, and language can be complex. Many Wu, Min, Hakka, and Cantonese speakers consider their own varieties as separate spoken languages, but the Han Chinese race as one entity. They do not regard these two positions as contradictory, but consider the Han Chinese an entity of great internal diversity. Moreover, the government of the People's Republic of China officially states that China is a multinational state, and that the term "Chinese" refers to a broader concept Zhonghua Minzu that incorporates groups that do not natively speak Chinese, such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols. (Groups that do speak Chinese and are considered "ethnic Chinese" are called Han Chinese.) This is seen as an ethnic and cultural concept, not a political one. Similarly, on Taiwan, some supporters of Chinese reunification promote the local language, while some supporters of Taiwan independence have little interest in the topic. And the Taiwanese identity incorporates Taiwanese aborigines, who are not considered Han Chinese because they speak Austronesian languages, predate Han Chinese settlement, and are culturally and genetically linked to other Austronesian-speaking peoples such as Polynesians.

Written Chinese

The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is complex. It is compounded by the fact that spoken variations evolved for centuries, since at least the late Han Dynasty, while written Chinese changed much less. Until the 20th century, most formal Chinese writing was done in wényán (文言), translated as Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese, which was very different from any spoken variety of Chinese, much as Classical Latin differs from modern Romance languages. Since the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the formal standard for written Chinese was changed to báihuà (白話/白话), or Vernacular Chinese, which, while not completely identical to the grammar and vocabulary of dialects of Mandarin, was based mostly on them. The term standard written Chinese now refers to Vernacular Chinese. Chinese characters are morphemes independent of phonetic change. Thus, although the number one is "yi" in Mandarin, "yat" in Cantonese and "tsit" in Hokkien, they derive from a common ancient Chinese word and still share an identical character ("一"). Nevertheless, the orthographies of Chinese dialects are not completely identical. The vocabularies of different dialects have diverged. In addition, while literary vocabulary is mostly shared among all dialects, colloquial vocabularies are often different. Colloquially written Chinese usually involves "dialectal characters" which may not be understood in other dialects or characters that are considered archaic in standard written Chinese. Cantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a widely used written colloquial standard with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this variety of Chinese. By contrast, the other regional languages do not have such widely-used alternative written standards. Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in online chat rooms and instant messaging, although for formal written communications Cantonese speakers still normally use standard written Chinese. Also, in Hunan, some women wrote their local language in Nü Shu, a syllabary derived from Chinese characters. The Dungan language, considered a dialect of Mandarin, is also nowadays written in Cyrillic, and was formerly written in the Arabic alphabet, although the Dungan people live outside China.

Chinese characters

The Chinese written language employs Chinese characters (漢字/汉字 pinyin: hànzì), which are logograms: each symbol represents a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). They are not just pictographs (pictures of their meanings), but are highly stylized and carry much abstract meaning. Only some characters are derived from pictographs. In 100 AD, the famed scholar Xushen in the Han Dynasty classified characters into 6 categories, only 4% as pictographs, and 82% as phonetic complexes consisting of a radical element that indicates meaning, and a phonetic element that arguably once indicated the pronunciation. All modern characters derive from Kaishu. There are currently two standards for Chinese characters. One is the traditional system, essentially a streamlined styling of Kaishu, still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. The other is the simplified system adopted during the 1950s Chinese Cultural Revolution in Mainland China. The simplified system requires fewer strokes to write certain radicals and has fewer synonymous characters. Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, is the first and only foreign country to recognize and officially adopt the simplified characters. Singapore Various written styles are used in Chinese calligraphy, including zhuanshu (篆書, "seal-script"), caoshu (草書, "grass script" or "haste script"), lishu (隸書, "official script") and kaishu (楷書, "standard script"). Calligraphers can write in traditional and simplified characters, but they tend to use traditional characters for traditional art. As with Latin script, a wide variety of fonts exist for printed Chinese characters, a great number of which are often based on the styles of single calligraphers or schools of calligraphy. There is no concrete record of the origin of Chinese characters. Legend suggests that Cangjie, a bureaucrat of the legendary emperor Huangdi of China about 2600 BC, invented Chinese characters. But archaeological evidence, mainly the oracles found in the 19-20th centuries, only dates Chinese characters to the Shang dynasty in 1700 BC. The vast majority of oracle bone inscriptions were found in Yinxu of the Shang Dynasty, although a few Zhou dynasty-related ones were also found. The forms of the characters in the inscriptions changed over the 200 to 300 years, and scholars date the inscriptions of the Shang to the ruler by the content, particularly from the name of the diviners who inscribed the shell or bone artifacts. Contemporaneous with the end of Shang and Western Zhou periods are the bronze inscriptions. Over the last century, a great many ancient bronze artifacts have been unearthed in China which contain dedicational texts of the Zhou aristocrats where the characters show similarities and innovations compared to the oracle inscriptions. It is said that during the reign of Zhou King Xuan (宣王 827-782 BCE), the form of written characters was revised, and these became refered to as the "greater seal script" or dazhuan.

History

Most linguists classify all of the variations of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended. The relations between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages are an area of active research, as is the attempt to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The main difficulty in this effort is that, while there is very good documentation that allows us to reconstruct the ancient sounds of Chinese, there is no written documentation of the division between proto-Sino-Tibetan and Chinese. In addition, many of the languages that would allow us to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan are very poorly documented or understood. Categorization of the development of Chinese is a subject of scholarly debate. One of the first systems was devised by the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren in the early 1900s. The system was much revised, but always heavily relying on Karlgren's insights and methods. Old Chinese (), sometimes known as 'Archaic Chinese', was the language common during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC), texts of which include inscriptions on bronze artifacts, the poetry of the Shijing, the history of the Shujing, and portions of the Yijing (I Ching). The phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters also provide hints to their Old Chinese pronunciations. The pronunciation of the borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean also provide valuable insights. Old Chinese was not wholly uninflected. It possessed a rich sound system in which aspiration or rough breathing differentiated the consonants, but probably had no tones yet. Work on reconstructing Old Chinese started with Qing dynasty philologists. Middle Chinese () was the language used during the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (7th through 10th centuries AD). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by the 切韻 'Qieyun' rhyme table (601 AD), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by the 廣韻 'Guangyun' rhyme table. Linguists are confident of having a reconstructed how Middle Chinese sounded. The evidence for the pronunciation of Middle Chinese comes from several sources: modern dialect variations, rhyming dictionaries, foreign transliterations, "rhyming tables" constructed by ancient Chinese philologists to summarize the phonetic system, and Chinese phonetic translations of foreign words. However, all reconstructions are tentative; for example, scholars have shown that trying to reconstruct modern Cantonese from the rhymes of modern Cantopop would give a very inaccurate picture of the language. The development of the spoken Chinese languages from early historical times to the present has been complex. The language tree shown below indicates how the present main divisions of the Chinese language developed out of an early common language. Comparison with the map above gives some idea of the complexities left out of the tree. For instance, the Min language that is centered in Fujian Province contains five subdivisions, and the Mandarin dialects (Beifanghua) also contains nine, such as Yunnan hua and Sichuan hua. Most northern Chinese people, in Sichuan and in a broad arc from the northeast (Manchuria) to the southwest (Yunnan), use various Mandarin dialects as their home language. The prevalence of Mandarin throughout northern China is largely due to north China's plains. By contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China promoted linguistic diversity. The presence of Mandarin in Sichuan is largely due to a plague in the 12th century. This plague, which may have been related to the Black Death, depopulated the area, leading to later settlement from north China. Until the mid-20th century, most southern Chinese did not speak any Mandarin. However, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various Chinese dialects, Nanjing Mandarin became dominant at least during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire. Since the 17th century, the Empire had set up orthoepy academies () to make pronunciation conform to the Qing capital Beijing's standard, but had little success. During the Qing's last 50 years in the late 19th century, the Beijing Mandarin finally replaced Nanjing Mandarin in the imperial court. For the general population, although variations of Mandarin were already widely spoken in China then, a single standard of Mandarin did not exist. The non-Mandarin speakers in southern China also continued to use their regionalects for every aspect of life. The new Beijing Mandarin court standard was thus fairly limited. This situation changed with the creation (in both the PRC and the ROC) of an elementary school education system committed to teaching Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken fluently by a majority of people in mainland China and on Taiwan. In Hong Kong, the language of education and formal speech remains Cantonese, but Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.

Influence on other languages

Throughout history Chinese culture and politics has had a great influence on unrelated languages such as Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese. Korean and Japanese both have writing systems employing Chinese characters (Hanzi), which are called Hanja and Kanji, respectively. The Vietnamese term for Chinese writing is Han Tu. It was the only available form to write the Vietnamese until the 14th century, used almost exclusively by Chinese-educated Vietnamese elites. From the 14th till late 19th century, Vietnamese was written with Chu Nom, a modified Chinese script incorporating sounds and syllables appropriate for native Vietnamese speakers. This is now completely replaced by a modified Latin script that incorporates a system of diacritical marks to indicate the tones, as well as modified consonants. Vietnamese language has mixed with multiple elements similar to Cantonese in regard to the specific intonations and rather sharp consonant endings. However, there is a slight influence from Mandarin due to the sharper vowels and, along with Mandarin, have the "kh" sound that missing from other Asiatic languages. In South Korea, the Hangul alphabet is generally used, but Hanja is used as a sort of boldface. (In North Korea, Hanja has been discontinued.) Since the modernization of Japan in the late 19th century, there has been debate about abandoning the use of Chinese characters, but the practical benefits of a radically new script have so far not been considered sufficient. Languages within the influence of Chinese culture also have a very large number of loanwords from Chinese. 50% or more of Korean vocabulary is of Chinese origin and the influence on Japanese and Vietnamese has been considerable. 10% of Philippine language vocabularies are of Chinese origin. Chinese also shares a great many grammatical features with these and neighboring languages, notably the lack of gender and the use of classifiers. The Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages seem to retain sounds of Classical Chinese that are otherwise only found in southern China.

Sounds

:For more specific information on phonology of Chinese see the respective main articles of each spoken variety. The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus consisting of a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a triphthong in certain varieties) with an optional onset or coda consonant as well as a tone. There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where the nasal sonorant consonants and can stand alone as their own syllable. Across all the spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda, but syllables that do have codas are restricted to , , , , , , or . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Mandarin, are limited to only two, namely and . Consonant clusters do not generally occur in either the onset or coda. The onset may be an affricate or a consonant followed by a semivowel, but these are not generally considered consonant clusters. The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 10 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese are the five tones of Standard Mandarin applied to the syllable "ma". The tones correspond to these five characters:
- "mother" — high level
- "hemp" — high rising
- "horse" — low falling-rising
- "scold" — high falling
- question particle — neutral .

Romanization

Romanization is the process of transcribing a language in the Latin alphabet. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese languages; this is due to the complex history of interaction between China and the West, and to the Chinese languages' lack of phonetic transcription until modern times. Chinese is first known to have been written in Latin characters by Western Christian missionaries of the 16th century, but may be written down by Western travelers of missionaries of earlier periods. At present, the most common romanization system for Standard Mandarin is Hanyu Pinyin, also known simply as Pinyin. Pinyin is the official Mandarin romanization system for the People's Republic of China, and the official one used in Singapore (see also Chinese language romanisation in Singapore). Pinyin is also very commonly used when teaching Mandarin in schools and universities of North America and Europe. Perhaps the second-most common system of romanization for Mandarin is Wade-Giles. This system was probably the most common system of romanization for Mandarin before Hanyu Pinyin was developmed. Wade-Giles is often found in academic use in the U.S., and is widely used in Taiwan. Here are a few examples of Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles, for comparison: Regardless of system, tone transcription is often left out, either due to difficulties of typesetting or propriety for audience. Wade-Giles' extensive use of easily-forgotten apostrophes adds to the confusion. Thus, most Western readers will be much more familiar with Beijing than they will be with Běijīng, and with Taipei than with T'ai2-pei3. Regardless of romanization, the words are pronounced the same. Learning a system of romanization requires occasional deviations from the learner's own language, so, for example, Hanyu Pinyin uses "q" for very different values than an English speaker would probably be used to; the sound represented is similar to the English "ch", but is further back. This is a cause of confusion but is unavoidable, as Mandarin (and any language transcribed) will have phonemes different from those of the learner's own. On the other hand, this can be beneficial, since the learner knows immediately that he will have to learn a new pronunciation. Often with languages like Spanish, the pronunciation is similar enough to English that a learner will often revert to his habitual pronunciation when he sees the letters in Spanish words. There are many other systems of romanization for Mandarin, as well as systems for Cantonese, Minnan, Hakka, and other Chinese languages. Also there are at least two systems of cyrillization of Chinese. The most widespread is the Palladius system.

Morphology

Chinese morphology is strictly bound to a set number of syllables with a fairly rigid construction which are the morphemes, the smallest building blocks, of the language. Some of these single-syllable morphemes can stand alone as individual words, but contrary to what is often claimed, Chinese is not a monosyllabic language. Most words in the modern Chinese spoken varieties are in fact multisyllabic, consisting of more than one morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. The confusion arises in how one thinks about the language. In the Chinese writing system, each individual single-syllable morpheme corresponds to a single character, referred to as a zì (字). Most Chinese speakers think of words as being zì, but this view is not entirely accurate. Many words are multisyllabic, and are composed of more than one zì. This composition is what is known as a cí (詞), and more closely resembles the traditional Western definition of a word. However, the concept of cí was historically a technical linguistic term that until only the past century, the average Chinese speaker was not aware of. Even today, most Chinese speakers think of words as being zì. This can be illustrated in the following Mandarin Chinese sentence (romanized using pinyin): :Jīguāng, zhè liǎngge zì shì shéme yìsi? :激光, 這兩個字是甚麼意思? :激光, 这两个字是什么意思? The sentence literally translates to, "Jī 激 and guāng 光, these two zì 字, what do they mean?" However, the more natural English translation would probably be, "Laser, this word, what does it mean?" Even though jīguāng 激光 is a single word, speakers tend to think of its constituents as being separate (Ramsey, 1987). Old Chinese and Middle Chinese had many more monosyllabic words due to greater variability in possible sounds. The modern Chinese varieties lost many of these sound distinctions, leading to homonyms in words that were once distinct. Multisyllabic words arose in order to compensate for this loss. Most natively derived multisyllabic words still feature these original monosyllabic morpheme roots. Many Chinese morphemes still have associated meaning, even though many of them no longer can stand alone as individual words. This situation is analogous to the use of the English prefix pre-. Even though pre- can never stand alone by itself as an individual word, it is commonly understood by English speakers to mean "before," such as in the words predawn, previous, and premonition. Taking the previous example, jīguāng, jī and guāng literally mean "stimulated light," resulting in the meaning, "laser." However, jī is never found as a single word by itself, because there are too many other morphemes that are also pronounced in the same way. For instance, the morphemes that correspond to the meanings "chicken" 雞/鸡, "machine" 機/机, "basic" 基, "hit" 擊/击, "hunger" 饑/饥, and "sum" 積/积 are also pronounced jī in Mandarin. It is only in the context of other morphemes can an exact meaning of a zì be known. In certain ways, the logographic writing system helps to reinforce meaning in zì that are homophonous, since even though several morphemes may be pronounced the same way, they are written using different characters. Continuing with the example, we have: For this reason, it is very common for Mandarin speakers to put characters in context as a natural part of conversation. For example, when telling each other their names (which are often rare, or at least non-colloquial, combinations of zì), Mandarin speakers often state which words their names are found in. As a specific example, a speakers might say 名字叫嘉英，嘉陵江的嘉，英國的英 Míngzi jiào Jiāyíng, Jiālíngjiāng de jiā, Yíngguó de yíng "My name is Jiāyíng, the Jia of Jialing River and the Ying in England." The problem of homonyms also exists but is less severe in southern Chinese varieties like Cantonese and Taiwanese, which preserved more of the rimes of Middle Chinese. For instance, the previous examples of jī for "stimulated," "chicken," and "machine" have distinct pronunciations in Cantonese (romanized using jyutping): gik1, gai1, and gei1, respectively. For this reason, southern varieties tend to employ fewer multisyllabic words. There are a few morphemes in Chinese, many of them loanwords, that consist of more than one syllable. These words cannot be further divided into single-syllable meaningful units, however in writing each syllable is still written as separate zì. One example is the word for "spider," zhīzhū, which is written as 蜘蛛. Even in this case, Chinese tend to try to make some kind of meaning out of the constituent syllables. For this reason, the two characters 蜘 and 蛛 each have an associated meaning of "spider" when seen alone as individual characters. When spoken though, they can never occur apart.

Loanwords

Most Chinese words are formed out of native Chinese morphemes, including words describing imported objects and ideas. However, direct phonetic borrowing of foreign words has gone on since ancient times. Words borrowed from along the Silk Road in ancient times include 葡萄 "grape", 石榴 "pomegranate" and 獅子 "lion". Other words were borrowed from Buddhist scriptures, including 佛 "Buddha" and 菩薩 "bodhisattva". Foreign words continue to enter the Chinese language by transcription according to their pronunciations. This is done by employing Chinese characters with similar pronunciations; characters in this case are usually taken strictly for their phonetic values. For example, "Israel" becomes 以色列 (pinyin: yǐsèliè). The Chinese characters used here literally mean "using-colour-rank", or "ranking using colour", but the sense is automatically ignored because it is understood that the characters are used for their phonetic values only. Characters which are used nearly exclusively in the transcription of foreign words are present in Chinese; many of these characters date back to Middle Chinese when they were used to translate Sanskrit phonemes. For example, 斯 sī and 爾 ěr, which are Classical Chinese words for "this" and "you", are never used in their original senses (except in a limited number of idiomatic expressions) and more often used to transcribe the sounds /s/ and /l/ in foreign words. Nevertheless, this method tends to yield somewhat strange results, and is therefore overwhelmingly used to transcribe foreign names only. A rather small number of direct phonetic borrowings have survived as common words, including 幽默 yōumò "humour", 邏輯 luójí "logic", 時髦 shímáo "smart, fashionable", 麥克風 màikèfēng "microphone", and 歇斯底里 xiēsīdǐlǐ "hysterics". It is much more common to use existing Chinese morphemes to coin new words in order to represent imported concepts, such as technical expressions. Any Latin or Greek etymologies are dropped, making them more comprehensible for Chinese but introducing more difficulties in understanding foreign texts. For example, the word telephone was loaned phonetically as 德律風 (Standard Mandarin: délǜfēng) during the 1920s, but later 電話 (diànhuà "electric speech"), built out of native Chinese morphemes, became prevalent. Other examples include 電視 (diànshì "electric vision") for television, 電腦 (diànnǎo "electric brain") for computer; 手機 (shǒujī "hand machine") for cellphone, and 藍牙 (lányá "blue tooth") for Bluetooth. Occasionally half-transliteration, half-translation compromises are accepted, such as 漢堡包 (hànbǎo bāo, "Hamburg bun") for hamburger. Sometimes translations are designed so that they sound like the original while incorporating Chinese morphemes. This is often done for commercial purposes, for example 奔騰 (bēnténg "running leaping") for Pentium and 賽百味 (sàibǎiwèi "better-than hundred tastes") for Subway restaurants. Another important source came from a related writing system, kanji, which are Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. The Japanese used kanji to translate many European words in the late 19th century and early 20th century. These words are called wasei-kango in Japanese (和製漢語 literally Japanese-made Chinese), and many of these words were then loaned into Chinese. Examples include lìchǎng (立場, たちば, stance), zhéxué (哲學, てつがく, philosophy), chōuxiàng (抽象, ちゅうしょう, abstract), guóyǔ (國語, こくご, national language), zhǔyì (主義, しゅぎ, -ism) and làngmàn (浪漫、ロマンス、romance). Some of these terms were coined by the Japanese by giving new senses to existing Chinese terms or by referring to expressions used in classical Chinese literature. As a result, these terms are virtually indistinguishable from native Chinese words: indeed, there is dispute over some of these terms as to whether the Japanese or Chinese coined them first. As a result of this to-and-fro process, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese continue to share many terms describing modern terminology, in parallel to a similar corpus of terms built from Greco-Latin terms shared among European languages.

Grammar

In general, all spoken varieties of Chinese are isolating languages, in that they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure) rather than morphology (changes in the form of the word through inflection). Because they are isolating languages, they make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood. Chinese features Subject Verb Object word order, and like many other languages in East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic-comment construction to form sentences. Even though Chinese has no grammatical gender, it has an extensive system of measure words, another trait shared with neighbouring (but not related) languages like Japanese and Korean. See Chinese measure words for an extensive coverage of this subject. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction, pronoun dropping (and the related subject dropping), and the use of aspect rather than tense. Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess various differences. See Chinese grammar for the grammar of Standard Mandarin (the standardized Chinese spoken language), and the articles on other varieties of Chinese for their respective grammars.

See also


- Chinese numerals
- Chinese number gestures
- Haner language
- Four-character idiom
- Common phrases in different languages
- Chinese measure words
- Nü shu
- Han unification
- HSK test
- Subgroups of the Han nationality
- Chinese character encoding
- List of writing systems
- Numbers in various languages
- Chinese honorifics
- Chinese language facts and fantasy

References


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External links

Dictionaries


- [http://www.dict.cn Free Online Chinese - English Dictionary] 1,000,000 English and Chinese words
- [http://www.zhongwen.com Zhongwen.com:] Chinese to English dictionary and other resources presented in English; searchable by English meanings; Chinese text displayed as graphics (i.e. does not require any Chinese font)
- [http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=chardict MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary]
- [http://www.chineselanguage.org/CCDICT/index.html Chinese Characters Dictionary]: supports Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Hakka etc.
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Chinese-english/ Chinese - English Dictionary]: from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
- [http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/chinese-french-dictionary.html Chinese - French Dictionary] search Chinese, pinyin or French
- [http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html CEDICT] Chinese-English Dictionary Project
- [http://www.online-dictionary.biz/english/chinese Chinese dictionary] Free Chinese-English-Chinese dictionary
- [http://stardict.sourceforge.net Stardict] free (GPL) multilanguage dictionary including simplified/traditional Chinese for Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) and win32
- [http://cdict.giga.net.tw English-Chinese Translation Dictionary]: Chinese-English-Chinese Online Dictionary (Taiwan-based; simplified characters not recognised)
- [http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordsearch.php CantoDict]: Cantonese-English Dictionary Project

Resources for students of Chinese


- [http://www.chinese-forums.com Chinese Forums:]Discussion of Chinese language and culture with some very knowledgable participants, mostly intermediate or advanced learners of Chinese but also many native speakers / overseas Chinese.
- [http://www.oneaday.org Oneaday.org] One Chinese idiom a day (simplified and traditional characters) with pinyin transliteration and English translation.
- [http://www.shufawest.us/language/tonedrill.html Mandarin Tone Drill] Testing your knowledge of Mandarin tones.
- [http://www.mandarin123.com/pronunciation.html Mandarin Tone Quizzes] Useful practices on Mandarin tones.
- [http://www.pinyinpractice.com/tones.htm Pinyin Practice] Pinyin practice for Mandarin learners in all level

2007

2007 (MMVII) is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. It corresponds to the years 5767/5768 in the Hebrew Calendar.

Predicted events

January-June


- January 1 - Romania and Bulgaria will join the European Union, and Irish will become an official language of the European Union.
- January 1 - Change of ISBN numbering system to 13 digit code.
- February 4 - Super Bowl XLI to be held in Miami, Florida.
- March - Predicted Launch of the first commercially available Flexible display screens, by electronics company Philips.
- March 1 - USS Baltimore to be deactivated.
- March 3 - Total lunar eclipse
- March 19 - Partial solar eclipse
- March 20 - The Elton John album Captain Fantastic and the Kid will be released. [http://music.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1045830.php/John_Taupin_prepare_%60Captain_Fantastic%60_2]
- March 26- The 300th anniversary of the Act of Union becoming law, making the separate Kingdoms of England and Scotland into one country, the Kingdom of Great Britain. April 28th will be the 300th anniversary of the abolition of the old Scottish parliament.
- March 31 to April 2 - NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four to be held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia.
- May 3 - Scottish parliamentary election, 2007 and the Welsh Assembly Election 2007
- May 4 - Spider-Man 3 will be released.
- Jacques Chirac's term as President of France will end.
- Unknown date - NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second flyby of Venus on the way to Mercury orbit.
- Expected release date of the film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- James Cameron hopes to have the popular anime graphic novel Battle Angel film out by June.

July-December


- July 4 - Transformers the Movie and the Fantastic Four sequel will be released in theaters
- July 7- Harry Potter 7 rumored to be released.(7.7.07; goes along with the seven theme).
- July 13 to July 29 - The XV Pan-American Games will be held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
- July 23 Scheduled release date for Windows Vista 2007-07-23
- July 27 to August 8 - The 21st World Scout Jamboree will take place at Chelmsford Hylands Park in Essex.
- July - the U.S. President's Trade Promotion Authority is set to expire.
- August 8 - August 18 - Summer Universiade in Bangkok, Thailand
- September 11 - Partial solar eclipse
- October - the ten countries who joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 will join the Schengen treaty.
- October 21 - Parliamentary election in the Canadian province of Ontario
- November - Referendum expected to be held in Australia on the basis of forming a republic.

Unknown/undecided dates


- India's 10th Five-Year Plan (2002-2007) comes to an end and the 11th plan (2007-2012) starts.
- Release of the Halo Movie.
- Release of the fourth Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie [http://www.ninjaturtles.com/]
- The CERN Large Hadron Collider in Europe (LHC)[http://lhc-new-homepage.web.cern.ch/lhc-new-homepage/] is scheduled to be switched on.
- Uranus' orbit positions it so that the Sun shines directly from above on a spot located at its equator
- The Mark III Ford Mondeo will be launched.
- Scheduled completion of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (UK).
- Pervez Musharraf's term as President of Pakistan legally ends.
- The 6th European Festival of Youth Choirs (EJCF) will be held in Basel, Switzerland.
- Presidential Election in Argentina.
- Presidential Election in France.
- Winter Universiade will be in Turin, Italy
- The FIFA Women's World Cup 2007 will be held in China.
- Schönefeld International Airport in Berlin will be renamed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport, and Tegel International Airport will close.
- Scheduled completion of Union Square Phase 7 in Hong Kong and Shanghai World Financial Center in Shanghai.
- 400th anniversary of the landing at Jamestown, Virginia, US, will be celebrated, with an anticipated visit from the Queen of the United Kingdom.
- The First Freedom Center will open in Richmond, Virginia, US.
- US Interstate 99 will be extended from its current terminus in Bald Eagle, PA to Interstate 80 outside Bellefonte, PA.
- The Hubble Space Telescope's batteries are set to run out of power, if action is not taken by NASA.
- The deadline for bids to host the 2016 Summer Olympics will probably be this year.
- The 2014 Winter Olympics host city will be announced in Guatemala.
- A federal election in Australia will be held.
- First Type 45 Destroyer, "HMS Daring", enters service with the British Royal Navy.
- Jack Kevorkian is eligible for parole.
- Charles Manson is eligible for parole.
- Slovakia is expected to enter the phase three of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and introduce the Euro as de facto currency, substituting the Slovakian Koruny (SKK).
- The comic strip For Better or For Worse will end after a 28-year run.
- A Futurama movie is slated to be released to DVD sometime this year
- The BBC World Service is to launch a television news channel in Arabic.
- A Star Wars 3-D re-release is planned, with all six movies undergoing further changes ,restorations, and additions.
- Resident Evil 4 is expected for release in cinemas.
- Complete integration between the Andean Community and Mercosur into the South American Community of Nations is expected by this year.

Fictional Events


- The plot of Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters likely begins on July 12 of this year.
- The "Tanker Chapter" of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty takes place on or after August 8 of this year.
- In the Mega Man series, Dr. Thomas Light is awarded the Nobel Prize for the creation of the Robot Master in this year (2007). Dr. Wily's jealousy leads him to reprogram the industrial robot masters one year later (2008, officially December 200X) starting the beginning of the long running series of games.
- In the video game, Ghost Recon 2, this is the year when a second Korean war starts.
- In the television series, Odyssey 5 the earth explodes and the consciousness of the 5 surviving crew members of the space shuttle odyssey are sent back in time by a being known as The Seeker to prevent the earth's destruction.
- The popular PC game Battlefield 2 takes place in this year.
- The events of American television series Wild Palms take place during this year.
- The events of video game Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory take place in the summer of this year.
- Category:Years in the future ko:2007년 ja:2007年 simple:2007 th:พ.ศ. 2550

Republic of China

The Republic of China (, Wades-Giles: Chung¹-hua² Min²-kuo², Tongyong Pinyin: JhongHuá MínGuó, Hanyu Pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó, Pe̍h-oē-jī: Tiong-hoâ Bîn-kok) is a state that currently has jurisdiction over the island groups of Taiwan, the Pescadores, Kinmen, and Matsu. From 1912 to 1949 the ROC encompassed all of China. The name "Taiwan" is often used synonymously with the existing Republic of China, while the term "China" usually refers to the People's Republic of China (PRC) or mainland China. The ROC was founded in 1912 to replace the Qing Dynasty, ending 2,000 years of imperial rule in China. Its existence on mainland China was scarred by warlordism, Japanese invasion, and civil war and ended in 1949 when the Kuomintang (KMT) was overthrown by the Chinese Communists and was forced to evacuate to Taiwan. There the KMT declared Taipei the provisional capital and continued to regard itself as the sole legitimate government of China. Meanwhile, the Communists proclaimed the People's Republic of China and claimed to have succeeded the ROC over all of China and that the ROC government in Taiwan was an illegitimate government. From its early days to its move to Taiwan to the early 1990s, the Republic of China was closely associated with the KMT, a party formed by the revolutionaries that originally established the Republic and was the authoritarian ruling party of the ROC. However, with political liberalization beginning in the late 1980s the country has transformed into a multiparty representative democracy. The political status of Taiwan continues to remain a contentious issue. The national boundaries have never been officially redrawn, but the ROC no longer pursues its claims over mainland China and Mongolia. The ROC was one of the founding members of the United Nations; however, in 1971, it was replaced in the UN by the PRC. Because the PRC claims sovereignty over Taiwan, the ROC's diplomatic recognition since the 1970s has suffered as a result of the One-China Policy and because of diplomatic maneuvers by the larger and more economically-significant PRC. Most countries switched their recognition from the ROC to the PRC in the 1970s; currently, the ROC is officially recognized by 25 states.

Political History

Republican China, 1911-1949

The Republican Era of China developed out of the Wuchang Uprising against the Qing Dynasty on October 10, 1911. The Republic of China government was declared on January 1, 1912, with Sun Yat-sen as first elected provisional president. As part of the agreement to have the last emperor Puyi abdicate, Yuan Shikai was officially elected president in 1913. However, Yuan dissolved the ruling KMT, ignored the provisional Constitution in asserting presidential power, and ultimately declared himself emperor in 1915. 1915 In response, Yuan's supporters deserted him, and many provinces declared independence and became warlord states. Yuan Shikai died of natural causes in 1916. This thrust China into a decade of warlordism. Sun Yat-sen, forced into exile, returned to Guangdong province with the help of southern warlords in 1917 and 1920, and set up successive rival governments. Sun reestablished the KMT in October 1919. After Sun's death in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek became the effective leader of the KMT having, with the help of the Soviet Union, led the successful Northern Expedition, which defeated the warlords and united China nominally under the KMT. However, Chiang soon dismissed his Soviet advisors, and purged communists and leftists from the KMT, catalyzing the Chinese Civil War. The 1930s were a decade of growth for the areas under KMT control, while the Communists were being pushed into the interior as Chiang Kai-shek sought to destroy them. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and made massive territorial gains during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). With Japan's surrender in 1945, the Republic of China emerged victorious and became one of the founding members of the United Nations. The civil war resumed and intensified after the Japanese surrender, and it ended in the Communist victory in 1949.

The Republic of China on Taiwan, 1945-present

After the defeat of Japan during World War II, Taiwan was surrendered to the Allies and occupied by the ROC government on behalf of the Allied Powers. It was governed under a corrupt military administration leading to widespread island unrest, culminating in the bloody 228 Incident. Martial law was declared in 1948. In this tumultuous climate, after the defeat of the KMT in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek evacuated the Republic of China government to Taiwan and declared Taipei the provisional capital of China. Accompanying his retreat were some 2 million refugees from mainland China, adding to the already present population of approximately 6 million. During the Cold War, the Republic of China was seen by the West as "Free China" and a bastion against Communism, while in contrast the People's Republic of China was seen as "Red China" or "Communist China". The Republic of China was recognized as the sole legitimate government of both Mainland China and Taiwan by the UN and many Western nations until the 1970s. Taiwan remained under martial law, under the name of the "Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion" (動員戡亂時期臨時條款) and one-party rule for four decades from 1948 until 1987, when Presidents Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui gradually liberalized and democratized the system. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the more pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected president, becoming the first non-KMT constitutional president of the Republic of China. In the 2004 presidential elections, after being shot while campaigning just one day before, Chen was reelected by a narrow margin of just 0.2%. In both Chen's terms the DPP and the Taiwanese independence leaning Pan-Green Coalition failed to secure a majority of seats in the legislature, losing to the KMT and the pro-eventual unification leaning Pan-Blue Coalition.

Politics

Republican China, 1911-1949

The original founding of the Republic centered on the Three Principles of the People (san min zhuyi): nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood. Nationalism meant standing up to Japanese and European interference, democracy meant elected rule modeled after Japan's parliament, and people's livelihood or socialism, meant government regulation of the means of production. Another lesser known principle that the Republic was founded upon was "five races under one union" (五族共和), which emphasized the harmony of the five major ethnic groups in China as represented by the colored stripes of the original Five-Colored Flag of the Republic. However, this five races under one union principle and the corresponding flag were abandoned in 1927. In reality these three principles were left unrealized. Republican China was marked by warlordism, foreign invasion, and civil war. Although there were elected legislators, from its inception, it was actually a largely one-party dictatorship apart from some minor parties [http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_17.htm#bm7], including the Chinese Youth Party[http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/journal/summaries/number7/Chang%20Yu-fa.htm], the National Socialist Party and the Rural Construction Party[http://english.chinamil.com.cn/site2/special-reports/2005-08/01/content_263104.htm], with suppression of dissent, within the KMT of the Communists. As the central government was quite weak, little could be done in terms of land reform or redistribution of wealth either. Politics of this era consisted primarily of the political and military struggle between the KMT and the CCP, in between bouts of active military resistance against Japanese invasion.

Republic of China on Taiwan, 1949-Present

The constitution of the Republic of China was drafted before the fall of mainland China to the Communists and was created for the purpose of forming a coalition government between the Nationalists and the Communists for rule of all of China, including Taiwan. However, the CCP boycotted the National Assembly, and it is also worth noting, that the Taiwanese representatives were not elected. The constitution went into effect December 25, 1947. Because Taiwan remained under martial law from 1948 until 1987, much of the constitution was not in effect. Since the lifting of martial law, the Republic of China has undergone a drastic process of democratisation and reform, removing legacy components that were originally meant for the governing of mainland China. Many legacy components that still remain are nonfunctional. This process of amendment continues today as the government continues to reform itself. In May of 2005, a new national assembly was elected to reduce the number of parliamentary seats and implement several constitutional reforms. These reforms have since been passed, with the national assembly essentially voting to abolish itself and transferring the power of constitutional reform to the popular ballot.

Political status and the major camps

One key issue has been the political status of Taiwan itself. With the diplomatic isolation brought about in the 1970s and 1980s, the notion of "recovering the mainland" by force has been dropped and the Taiwanese localization movement stengthened. The relationship with the People's Republic of China and the related issues of Taiwan independence and Chinese reunification continue to dominate Taiwanese politics. The political scene in the ROC is divided into two camps, with the pro-unification and center-right KMT, People First Party (PFP), and New Party forming the Pan-Blue Coalition, and the pro-independence and center-left Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and centrist Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) forming the Pan-Green Coalition. Supporters of the Pan-Green camp tend to favor emphasisizing Taiwan as being distinct from China. Many Pan-Green supporters seek Taiwanese independence and for dropping the title of the Republic of China. However, more progressive members of the coalition, such as current President Chen Shui-bian, claim that it is unnecessary to proclaim independence because Taiwan is already "an independent, sovereign country" and that the Republic of China is the same as Taiwan. Some members take a much more extreme view about Taiwan's status, claiming that the ROC is nonexistent and calling for the establishment of an independent Republic of Taiwan. Supporters of this idea have even gone as far as issuing passports for their republic. While the Pan-Green camp favors Taiwan having an identity separate from that of China, Pan-Blue members seem to be strongly supportive of the concept of the Republic of China, which remains an important symbol of their links with China. Pan-Blue views reunification as something that will happen eventually, but until then the current status quo is preferable to declaring independence. During his visit to mainland China in April 2005, KMT Party Chairman Lien Chan reiterated his party's belief in the "One China" policy that states that there is only one China controlled by two governments and that Taiwan is a part of China. PFP Party Chair James Soong expressed the same sentiments during his visit in May. For its part, the PRC has indicated that it finds a Republic of China far more acceptable than an independent Taiwan, and ironically, though it views the ROC as an illegitimate entity, it has made it clear that any effort on Taiwan to formally abolish the ROC or formally renounce its claim over the Mainland would result in a strong and possibly military reaction.

National political structure

The head of state is the president, who is elected by popular vote for a four-year term on the same ticket as the vice-president. The president has authority over the five administrative branches (Yuan): the Executive Yuan, Legislative Yuan, Control Yuan, Judicial Yuan, and Examination Yuan. The president appoints the members of the Executive Yuan as his cabinet, including a premier, who is officially the President of the Executive Yuan; members are responsible for policy and administration. The main legislative body is the unicameral Legislative Yuan with 225 seats, of which 168 are elected by popular vote. Of the remainder, 41 are elected on the basis of the proportion of nationwide votes received by participating political parties, eight are elected from overseas Chinese constituencies on the same principle, as are the eight seats for the aboriginal populations; members serve three-year terms. Originally the unicameral National Assembly, as a standing constitutional convention and electoral college, held some parliamentary functions, but the National Assembly was abolished in 2005 with the power of constitutional amendments handed over to the Legislative Yuan and all eligible voters of the Republic. The Judicial Yuan is Taiwan's highest judicial body. It interprets the constitution and other laws and decrees, judges administrative suits, and disciplines public functionaries. The president and vice president of the judicial yuan and 15 justices, which form the Council of Grand Justices, are nominated and appointed by the president of the republic, with the consent of the legislative yuan. The highest court, the Supreme Court, consists of a number of civil and criminal divisions, each of which is formed by a presiding judge and four associate judges, all appointed for life. In 1993 a separate constitution court was established to resolve constitutional disputes, regulate the activities of political parties and accelerate the democratization process. Trial is not by jury, but the right to a fair public trial is protected by law and respected in practice; many cases will be presided over by multiple judges. Taiwan's political system does not fit traditional models. The Premier is selected by the President without the need for approval from the Legislature, but the Legislature can pass laws without regard to the President, as neither he nor the Premier wields veto power. Thus, there is little incentive for the President and the Legislature to negotiate on legislation if they are of opposing parties. In fact, since the election of the pan-Green's Chen Shuibian as President in 2000 and the continued control of the Legislative Yuan by the pan-Blue majority, legislation has repeatedly stalled, as the two sides have been deadlocked. Another curiousity of the Taiwanese system is due to historical artifact--because Taiwan was previously dominated by strong-man single party politics, real power in the system shifted from one position to another, depending on what position was currently occupied by the leader of the state (Chiang Kai-shek and later his son, Chiang Ching-kuo). The term ruling party was previously applied to the KMT, and rightfully so, as it was the authoritarian party that controlled all aspects of government. Under a Leninist style one party state, there was little difference between the ROC government, the KMT, and the army. Today, however, the term "ruling party" is used to describe the party holding the Presidency, though this is incorrect since the KMT is now only one of the two major parties, and since Taiwan does not have a parliamentary system, where the executive branch would be occupied by the same party or coalition that held a majority in the legislature.

Regional political divisions

one party state According to the 1947 Constitution, written before the fall of mainland China to the Communists and with the intention of applying it to all of China, the highest level administrative division is the province (the provincial level also includes special administrative regions, regions, centrally administered municipalities). However, since 1998, the only provincial governments to remain fully functional under ROC jurisdiction—Taiwan Province—has been effectively streamlined with responsibility assumed by the central government and the county-level governments (the other existing provincial government, Fuchien, was streamlined much earlier). The ROC currently administers two provinces and two provincial level cities:
- Taiwan Province (all): the Taiwanese main island, except the two municipalities, plus Penghu county (Pescadores Islands)
  - Sixteen counties
  - Five provincially administrated cities
- Fuchien Province (part): several islands off the Chinese mainland:
  - Kinmen County: Kinmen, Lesser Kinmen and Wuchiu
  - part of Lienchiang County, namely Matsu, Dongyin, Siyin and Jyuguang
- Two Central Municipalities
  - Kaohsiung
  - Taipei The Republic of China also controls the Dongsha Islands and Taiping Island, which are part of the disputed South China Sea Islands. They have been placed under Kaohsiung City after the retreat to Taiwan. Taichong is currently under consideration for elevation to central municipality status. Also, Taipei County and Kaohsiung County are considering mergers with their respective cities. Taichong Additionally, although the ROC has not constitutionally renounced sovereignty over Mainland China (including Tibet), outer Mongolia, and Tannu Uriankhai, though in 1991 President Lee Teng-hui it stated that his government does not dispute the fact that the Communist Party rules mainland China. The DPP government under Chen Shui-bian has made moves to ignore such claims, including removing outer Mongolia from the ROC's official maps and the establishment of a representative office in Mongolia's capital, Ulan Bator. One reason the ROC has never officially dropped its claims is fear that the PRC would use such a move as a pretext for invasion, calling it a move towards Taiwan independence. Official boundaries continue to show 35 provinces, 14 municipalities, 1 special administrative region, and 2 regions, instead of 23 provinces, 4 municipalities, and autonomous regions shown on the maps from the PRC that reflect the PRC actual political divisions; however, the ruling DPP government has dropped regulations that require Taiwanese map makers to depict the official boundaries.

Foreign relations

Republican China, 1911-1949

The foreign relations of Republican China were complicated by a lack of internal unity with competing centers of power that all claimed legitimacy as well as foreign interference and invasion. Japan, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and other major powers all at one point or another made claims to various parts of China during this time. During the early years of the Republic, almost all foreign powers recognized the "warlord" government controlled by Yuan Shi-kai in Beijing as the legitimate government in China. In return for recognition, the Republic had to give up control of Outer Mongolia and Tibet. China would remain suzerain, but Russia would be allowed to influence Mongolia while the British would be allowed in Tibet. It was also this government that sent representatives to sign Treaty of Versailles (over protests by students in the May Fourth Movement). With the conclusion of World War I, China became one of five permanent members in the League of Nations. After the defeat of the Beiyang government in Beijing by the Kuomintang (Nationalists), the Nationalist Government in Nanjing received widespread diplomatic recognition. This recognition lasted throughout the Chinese Civil War and World War II (though Japan established a rival puppet government during the invasion that received some recognition from the Axis). Having fought on the side of the Allied Powers during World War II, the Republic of China became one of the founding members of the UN and held one of five permanent seats on the UN Security Council. [http://www.cecc.gov/pages/virtualAcad/his/republican.php]

Republic of China on Taiwan, 1949-Present

After the KMT retreat to Taiwan, most countries, notably the countries in the Western bloc, continued to maintain relations with the ROC government. Recognition gradually eroded and many countries switched recognition to the PRC in the 1970s. Today, the Republic of China on Taiwan continues to be officially recognized by 25 nations, mostly small countries in Central America and Africa but also including the Holy See of the Catholic Church. The People's Republic of China has a policy of not having diplomatic relations with any nation which recognizes the Republic of China and insists that all nations with which it has diplomatic relations make a statement which recognizes its claims to Taiwan. In practice, however, most major nations maintain unofficial diplomatic relations with Taiwan and the statement which is required by the PRC is couched in extremely carefully worded ambiguity. In some major nations who do not recognize it, the ROC has representative offices called the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office or the "Taipei Representative Office" for short, that take on most of the functions of an official embassy, such as issuing visas. Likewise, many nations maintain counterpart trade and economic offices in the ROC, such as the American Institute in Taiwan, which is the de facto embassy of the United States in the ROC. The Republic of China was in the United Nations as one of its founding members and held China's seat on the Security Council until 1971, when it was expelled by General Assembly Resolution 2758 and replaced in all UN organs with the government of the People's Republic of China. Multiple attempts by the Republic of China to re-join the UN have not made it past committee. (See China and the United Nations) Besides the dispute with the PRC over the mainland, the ROC also has a controversial relationship with Mongolia. Until 1945, the ROC claimed jurisdiction over Mongolia, but under Soviet pressure, it recognized Mongolian independence. Shortly thereafter, it repudiated this recognition and continued to claim jurisdiction over Mongolia until recently. Since the late 1990s, the relationship with Mongolia has become a controversial topic. Any move to renounce sovereignty over Mongolia is controversial because the PRC claims that it is a prelude to Taiwan independence.

Military

Militaries of Republican China, 1911-1949

As power was fractured, several armies were associated with this era, including those of the various warlords, the KMT, and the CPC. There were two armies to be regarded the "national army": the Beiyang Army of the Warlord government and later the National Revolutionary Army of the Nationalist Government. The founding of the Republic was made possible by mutiny within the Qing New Army. When Yuan Shikai took over as president, he was already commander of the Beiyang Army, which controlled North China. However, with Yuan's death in 1916, numerous factions within the Beiyang Army broke loose, and the leading generals of the Beiyang Army became warlords, operating huge fiefdoms in the following decade. Regulars in these warlord armies often did not wear uniforms and the distinction between bandit and soldier was blurred. With the help of the Comintern, Sun Yat-sen established the National Revolutionary Army in 1925 in Guangdong with a goal of reunifying China under the Kuomintang. To this end, it initially fought against the warlords that had fractured China, successfully unifying China, and later against the Communist Red Army. It also fought against Japanese invasion during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931/1937-1945), which became a part of the larger World War II. Leadership of the military during this time em