228 Incident (The Terrible Inspection), circa 1947, by Li Jun At 11:00 A.M. of February 27, 1947, Taipei City’s Monopoly Bureau was informed that a boat carrying fifty boxes of illegal matches and cigarettes had arrived near the port of Danshui, north of Taipei. Matches and cigarettes were part of the system of government monopolies … Continue reading The 228 Incident – The Uprising that Changed Taiwan’s History
In recent years it has become common both in Taiwan and in Hong Kong to portray mainland Chinese as backward and uncivilized. Some controversial episodes that were covered by the media have shaped this perception. Only to name a few, in 2014 a mainland couple allowed their child to urinate on a street in Hong … Continue reading Civilized Taiwanese vs Uncivilized Mainlanders: Peng Mingmin and Anti-Chinese Rhetoric
The current discussion about Taiwanese identity is very much influenced by the ideological and political battle between those who think that the Taiwanese people constitute a separate nation, and those who think that the Taiwanese are simply a subgroup of the larger Chinese nation. Between 1945 and the end of the 1980s, when Taiwanese national … Continue reading The Origins of Taiwanese Identity
From 2008 to 2016 Taiwan’s Guomindang administration and China’s Communist Party sought to deepen cross-strait dialogue and improve relations between the two sides. The meeting between Zhang Zhijun, the chief of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), and Wang Yuqi, the chief of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), as well as Zhang Zhijun’s visit to Taiwan in 2014, … Continue reading The 1992 Consensus and China-Taiwan Relations
China’s Televised Confessions On January 17 Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen, made a high-profile confession on China Central Television (CCTV), saying that he had turned himself to the authorities voluntarily. He confessed to having caused the death of a 20-year-old woman while drunk-driving back in 2003. According to China’s state media, Gui had subsequently fled … Continue reading Voluntary Surrender and Confession in China’s Legal System – From the Empire to the People’s Republic
Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) and of the Guomindang from 1927 to 1975, is a controversial figure whose legacy is still debated both in China and in Taiwan. In this post we shall let Chiang himself speak and quote several passages from his speeches and works which highlight the complexity … Continue reading Chiang Kai-shek – Dictator, Idealist, Criminal?
When the Qing Dynasty was overthrown in 1911 and the Republic of China (ROC) was proclaimed, the revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen embarked on an ambitious experiment to modernise the country according to liberal Western ideals of democracy, human rights and division of powers. The new Republican government issued a Provisional Constitution which guaranteed progressive … Continue reading Legalism And Leninism In China’s Constitutional History
In a previous post we have demonstrated that the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) contains fundamental elements which are consistent with, if not directly derived from, Legalist principles. In this chapter we shall analyse and compare the Legalist elements contained in the criminal codes of the Republic of China (ROC) and of … Continue reading Legalist Tradition And Criminal Law – Republic Of China vs People’s Republic Of China
Sun Yat-sen (source: Wikipedia) Sun Yat-sen (1866 – 1925) was a Chinese revolutionary and politician. During the Late Qing era he fought to overthrow the Manchu Dynasty and establish a new, modern Chinese state. His political doctrines, most notably the Three Principles of the People, had a deep impact on the development of China in … Continue reading Sun Yat-sen: Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary
The following text is the Provisional Constitution (約法) of the Republic of China as adopted by the National People’s Convention (國民會議) on May 12, 1931. The Provisional Constitution included Sun Yat-sen’s principle of “political tutelage”, de facto providing the Guomindang government with dictatorial powers. The Constitution remained in effect until 1936, when the government promulgated a new … Continue reading Provisional Constitution Of The Republic Of China (1931)
