Happy Birthday Republic of China (Taiwan) ??? ?
Happy Birthday Republic of China (Taiwan) ??? ?
Image by Canadian Pacific
More about Sun Yat-Sen:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen" rel="nofollow">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen</a>
10th October 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China.
Happy Birthday Republic of China / Taiwan!!
Dr. Sun, Yat-Sen is the father of modern China. He led the overthrowing of Imperial China’s Ching (Qing) dynasty in 1911. Republic of China was officially founded on 10th October, 1911. Unfortumately, like many revolutions, the new Nationalist (Kuomintang) government was disorganised, ineffective and corrupt.
A civil was erupted in China between the Nationalists and the home-grown Communists (i.e. China’s Communists were not imported from the Soviet Union) in the 1930s. Ironically, when Japan invaded China in 1937, the Nationalists and the Communists united their effort to fight back the Japanese and during World War II.
When World War II ended in 1945, sadly, the Chinese Civil War resumed. Eventually, the Nationalists were defeated in Mainland China and they retreated to Taiwan. Meanwhile, the Communists established the People’s Republic of China.
For decades, the Republic of China in Taiwan was considered the legitimate China, as it was thought they would soon re-organized themselves to re-take Mainland China. Taipei’s Republic of China was a UN member but not Beijing’s People’s Republic government.
In 1972, everything changed when it became clear that Taiwan was in no power to re-take China. U.S. President Nixon first switch allegiance to recognize the People’s Republic and kicked Republic of China in Taiwan out of UN. It was a very sad day for the people of Taiwan and many never forgave the U.S.
Most other countries followed suit and established diplomatic relations with Beijing’s Communist regime, severing relationship with Taipei’s Republic regime overnight.
Despite lacking official UN status, Republic of China, now often called Taiwan, has its own government, passport, currency, democracy and sovereignty. Taiwanese people travel around the world freely using their own Republic of China passports. Taiwanese ships and airplanes sail and fly to many places around the world also. The Taiwan dollar trade freely around the world.
However, Taiwan is not a member of the WHO (World Health Organization) or other UN agencies, nor can it participate in the Olympics calling itself Taiwan or the Republic of China. They either cannot join such organizations at all, or participate in such international events using named such as "Chinese Taipei" or "Taipei, China" mainly due to diplomatic intervention by the Communists.
Here is wishing the Republic of China / Taiwan will gain full UN membership one day and its legitimacy restored!