Nowadays, there are two countries named “ China” in the world. One of them is People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC is the second most powerful country in the world, however, it was founded for only about 60 years. Another “ China” is Republic of China (ROC), which is commonly known as “ Taiwan”. The ROC lost most of its territory during the Chinese Civil War, thus it isn’t as strong as it used to be. What’s more? The PRC government is really powerful that it tries to force the ROC to become a part of the PRC. The PRC is like a parvenu, so it’s getting out of control. The ROC is much weaker than the PRC, however, the ROC tries to do its best because of the oppression from the PRC. The ROC government knows clearly that its citizens will no longer support it unless it makes them satisfied. On the other hand, the PRC government has on pressure because it has no opponent. It doesn’t care about its citizens because it doesn’t matter to its political power in the PRC. Therefore, although both the PRC and the ROC has “ China” in its name, they are actually totally different.
People’s Republic of China, which was founded in October, 1949 by the Communist Party of China, is the second most powerful country nowadays. The political system in the PRC used to be communism that first used by the Soviet Union; and it was replaced by Socialism with Chinese characteristics about 30 years ago. The PRC has the largest population in the world, however, most of them are in low social position. China was ruled under the control of emperor for a long time, thus government officials are considered to be in higher social stratum so far. For this reason, the disaffection between government officials and civilians becomes worse and worse. However, it’s said that “ the PRC government gives you freedom to speak, but you will no longer have freedom after giving your speech”. Although people were sometime unsatisfied with the government, they’re not able to express themselves because of repression from the PRC government.
In October 1949, after the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China (CPC) got control of China Mainland. The former government, which was composed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), displaced to Taiwan. The war led to China’s division into two Chinas, it was totally a success of PRC. In the early days, the system of the PRC government was Maoism, which was known as the Mao Tse-tung’s Thought. The essence of Maoism is actually Marx and Lenin’s communism. It was democratic at first. It broke the old feudal society and fought against landlords. What’s more? It communized everything, divided equally to people; and it stopped the disinflation in China.
The new china grew up rapidly. In 1950’s, the PRC joined the Korean War and supported North Korea with the Soviet Union; and finally North Korea won the war. This was the beginning of PRC’s failure. Although joining the war showed how strong the new China was, the PRC didn’t get any benefit from the war. About 200, 000 Chinese soliders including Mao’s son died during the war, and more than 400, 000 soliders were injured. Not only people died in the war, the relationship between the PRC and Western countries got worse. Thus it badly limited the development of PRC.
In 1957, Chairman Mao started the Anti-Rightist Movement. Rightists in the PRC were people who supported democracy, opposed Dictatorship of the proletariat and despotism. They even crucified a man who quarreled with the CPC’s decision. Many democratic personages were killed during the movement. In 1966, Mao started the riddled Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. About seven years before the revolution, there was a great famine in China. The famine was caused by the boastful social environment at that time. Because Chairman Mao himself was a vainglorious person, local governments and officials tried to pleased Chairman Mao by making a false report about grain yield. Therefore, different local governments and officials competed with each other; one of them even made a canard that they grew ten thousand tons of rice in an acreage land, or they raised a pig that weighted three thousand pounds. The number of famine victimes have been estimated to be between 20 and 43 million; and Historians estimated that there were at least 45 million premature deaths from 1958 to 1962.
Mao was obviously bad as a top leader of a country, however, the desire of power made him become a impenitent person. He made himself became a godlike figure so that his governance would be stable. The purpose of the Cultural Revolution was to persecute anyone that was minatorial to Chairman Mao’s government. They killed not only democratic personages, but also officials who were not in Mao’s group. For example, Liu Shaoqi, the Chairman of PRC at that time, was crucified during the revolution. A matter needing attention was that Chairman Liu was the top leader of the PRC instead of Chairman Mao. It was obvious that Chairman Mao was a autocratic person. In the revolution, more than one thousand million people were persecuted; and about 575, 500, 000 people died prematurely. The pecuniary loss during this time was about ¥1420 billion CNY, which was twice as much as the sum of the PRC’s GDP in the first 30 years.
Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is a dissident person in the PRC. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for “ his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.” He was also one of the authors of Charter 08, which is a manifesto initially signed by lots of Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists. However, he was arrested because of “ Inciting subversion of state power.” The 14th Dalai Lama, was the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner. As a matter a fact, he set up the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which was obviously not accepted. However, “ the struggle of the liberation of Tibet and the efforts for a peaceful resolution” was justified. Both of Liu Xiaobo and Dalai lama got political prosecution from the PRC government. It’s a good proof that the PRC is a country without freedom.
Republic of China, which was founded by the Chinese Nationalist Party in October 10, 1919. The ROC is the current government after the Qing Dynasty. After the Wuchang revolution, they successfully forced the emperor quit and founded the first democratic republic in Asia. As a matter of fact, the ROC is the most powerful country in the world. However, the ROC government only has the right to rule in Taiwan; most lands of ROC are under the control of the PRC. Therefore, the ROC isn’t a strong country any more since the ROC government lost Chinese Mainland and displaced to Taiwan. As a result of fact, the ROC government learned a lot from the failure in the civil war, so they focused on developing their country into a model of democratic country by using the Three principles of the people.
In 1894, there was a war between the Qing Dynasty and Japan. The old emperor’s dictatorship was suspected by some democratic people, and Sun Yat-sen was their leader. He went to Honolulu to found a foundation named “ Revive China Society” with American-Chinese, which was the greatest revolutionary league at that time. 11 years later, they cooperated with some other nationalistic leagues; and they became allied in Tokyo, Japan. After succeeded in founding Republic of China, the ROC government faced a hard time. The old Qing Dynasty officials who named Yuan Shi-kai wanted to take over the ROC government and became the new emperor. As a result of fact, Yuan became an emperor for few months, but he died because of illness. At this time, Sun Yat-sen started another new party called “ Chinese Revolutionary Party” in Tokyo, and replaced the old one that was under the control of Yuan Shi-kai in Guangzhou. This party was the original of the Chinese Nationalist Party nowadays.
Chiang Kai-shek, Generalissimo and the first president of the ROC, was voted to become a premier in 1926 after Sun Yat-sen’s death. He was one of the greatest conductors in the world. His goals during 1926 and 1936 were expelling Manchus, reviving Zhonghua (orthodox China), and establishing a unified government. As a matter of fact, he was the only one that unified the whole China after the last Emperor of China. During 1927 and 1937, the ROC under Chiang’s control developed very well, it was praised as the “ Golden Decade” by westerners. In the second Sino- Japanese War during 1937 and 1945, the Republic of China Army that ruled by Chiang was definitely a principal power; while the People’s Liberation Army (Army of CPC) was taking guerillas with enemies, the Republic of China Army won so many crucial battles. In 1942, the ROC was considered as one of the fourth-most powerful nations in the world because of the dominion of Chiang’s government.
While the PRC was trying to eliminate Chinese old cultures and to fooled people, the ROC started the Chinese Cultural Renaissance. It improved education standards and built up education with an emphasis on the Confucian principles of filial duty and fraternal love; and it encourage new styles of literary and art; and expressed those Chinese culture abroad. People translated Chinese literary into different languages, and published newspapers and magazines to showed Chinese cultural activities. The most important thing was that historians composed the Chinese literature history in order to correct the history that was changed during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. As a result of fact, the traditional Chinese cultural no longer existed in the PRC since the Cultural Revolution; those traditions could only be found in the ROC.
In 1970s, the ROC was still considered as the only legitimate Chinese government, which included both Chinese Mainland and Taiwan. The ROC used to be a founding member and one of the five permanent members of the United Nations. However, the PRC became a member of the United Nations while the ROC was still claiming that the ROC government was the only legal government of China. Therefore, the ROC quitted from the United Nations. Since then, the ROC was commonly known as “ Taiwan” or “ Chinese Taipei”; “ China” is only used to identified the PRC.
In the 2000 and 2004 election, Chen Shui-bian was voted to become president. He’s the first non-CNP president. After losing Chinese Mainland, the ROC decided to develop economic and decrease corruption. The multi-party system was a effect way to reach the goal. Because the CNP didn’t achieve their promise to people during 1990s, they were replaced by the Democratic Progressive Party during 2000 and 2008. Those parties competed with each other to win the political power. If they make people down, people have the rights to replace them with another party. With this system, the ROC became one of the Four Asian Tigers which represented the top four best-developed countries in Asia.
Although the PRC and the ROC seem to be similar, but actually they are really different. As a result of fact, the ROC government works much better than the PRC government. However, the sphere of influence of the ROC is really small, and the ROC is suppressed by the PRC. On the other hand, the PRC government is corrupt and degenerated, but it won’t fail so far. The PRC has the largest population, the second-largest GDP, the largest standing army with second-largest defense budget, and the fourth-largest territory in the world; it’s not so easy for such a huge machine to stop working. However, if the PRC government doesn’t introspect, the ROC government may get a chance to take over the whole China again in future.
