South China



South China, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. It borders the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the north and west, and shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the East, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. With a population of 268,806,063, it is the third-most populous state after India and the European Union. It has a size of 786,260 km2, having a comparable size to that of Turkey. It is comprised of 6 provinces -Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang and Shanghai.

=History=

Nationalist Era
On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.

After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.

The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA. Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the Soviet Union, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in the Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major Allies of World War II, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.

After the end of World War II, the Chinese Civil War resumed between the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang), led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by CCP Chairman Mao Zedong. Throughout the months of 1949, a series of Chinese Communist offensives led to the capture of its capital Beiping in January the 1st, and its name changed back to Beijing. Following the capture of Nanjing on 23 April, major cities passed from Kuomintang to Communist control with minimal resistance, through November. In most cases, the surrounding countryside and small towns had come under Communist influence long before the cities. Finally, on 1 October 1949, Communists led by Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China.

The United States began to see a communist takeover of China more and more plausible, severely concerning them as it would result in the presence of a strong soviet ally in East Asia and a potential butterfly effect where more Asian countries may fall under communism. This resulted in massive aid and military troops being sent to The Kuomintang, thanks to it managing to slow down the Communist offensive and retake some major cities like Changsha, Ningbo and Shanghai (the latter being regained through an amphibious operation). The war ended in 1949 when the Chinese Armistice Agreement was signed. The agreement created the Chinese Demilitarized Zone (CDZ) and established most of the current borders between the two countries.

Authoritarian Era
During the Korean War, some captured Communist Chinese soldiers, many of whom were originally KMT soldiers, were repatriated to South China rather than mainland China. A KMT guerrilla force continued to operate cross-border raids into southwestern China in the early 1950s. The ROC government launched a number of air bombing raids into key coastal cities of mainland China such as Shanghai.

The First Chinese Crisis (also known as the Shanghai crisis) began when the PLA started blockading Shanghai and threatened to retake the Shanghainese enclave. On 20 January 1955, the PLA took the entire Zhoushan archipelago with the entire ROC garrison of 1188 troops killed or wounded defending the island. On January 24 of the same year, the United States Congress passed the Dongguan Resolution authorizing the President to defend the ROC's Zhoushan islands. The First Taiwan Straits crisis ended in March 1955 when the PLA ceased its blockade. The crisis was brought to a close during the Bandung Conference.

The Second Chinese Crisis began on 23 August 1958, with air engagements between the PRC and the ROC military forces. Three North Chinese submarines were captured after being stranded on the South Chinese coast, and one South Chinese military plane was shot down over the East China Sea. Later in September, a series of low-level armed clashes took place in the frontier between North and South, also an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the South Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek.

Partially with the help of the China Aid Act of 1948 and the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, the KMT authorities implemented a far-reaching and highly successful land reform program during the 1950s. The 375 Rent Reduction Act alleviated tax burden on peasants and another act redistributed land among small farmers and compensated large landowners with commodities certificates and stock in state-owned industries. Although this left some large landowners impoverished, others turned their compensation into capital and started commercial and industrial enterprises. Together with businessmen who fled from North China, they once again revived South China's prosperity previously ceased along with Japanese withdrawal and managed a transition from an agricultural to a commercial, industrial economy.

Regarding politics and laws, Chiang Kai-shek operated an autocratic government, with the formation of new political parties prohibited except for the Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Youth Party and the China Democratic Socialist Party. In order to implement the strict political censorship, the lianzuo or collective responsibility system was adopted among the civil servants from 9 July 1949 and soon spread to all the enterprises and institutions, according to which no one would be employed without a guarantor. The government was authorized to deny the right of assembly, free speech and publication in Taiwanese Hokkien. Newspapers were asked to run propaganda articles or make last-minute editorial changes to suit the government's needs. And the Chinese Garrison Command had sweeping powers, including the right to arrest anyone voicing criticism of government policy and to screen publications prior to distribution.

The authoritarian character of South China was shown during the "White Terror" in which many thousands of people were imprisoned or executed for their political opposition to the Kuomintang. Many victims of the white terror were the South Chinese elite—political leaders, wealthier families, intellectuals, etc. In addition, North Chinese who escaped from the great famine were not spared either, as many had real or perceived associations with communists before they came to South China. For example, some North Chinese who had joined book clubs in Communist China, deemed leftist by the government, were liable to be arrested and many served long prison sentences for these real or perceived threats.

Democratic Era
Chiang Kai-shek died in April 1975. In the last few months before Chiang's death, the state went into a full paralysis that drew worldwide attention. The transition of power put South China into a weak position that benefited North China. In May 1975 the PLA launch a surprise attack in the disputed exclave of Shanghai (a territory which had been contentious due to its distance to the ROC and because of its demographic, economic and geostrategic importance) and completely occupied it in less than a week. As soon as it got known, there were talks through the red phone between Washington and Moscow regarding the situation: the soviets stated they were not aware of any North Chinese plans for invasion nor did they support the decision. The instability caused by Chiang Kai-shek's death, the lack of support that the PRC had, added to American and Soviet pressure for a diplomatic solution, made it so that the crisis only ended in some naval battles near the Shanghai coast and low-level clashes in the DMZ. While the occupation was militarily a success for the PRC, politically it resulted in tremendous international condemnation in which even some of its allies like the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact countries and Vietnam all opposed the invasion. The international isolation and pressures for peace set against the North Chinese resulted in the adoption of the UN General Assembly´s resolution, which handed Shanghai to a United Nations administration that coordinates a joint control of the island between North and South China (UNAS). Nonetheless, this was a poor conclusion for both Chinas: South China felt like they now had to share the control of Shanghai (which had been under their control for six decades) while North China felt like they had to share the territory they now occupied. It was also humiliating for both as it meant that they were technically not claiming Shanghai as a part of China anymore while indirectly recognizing the other's existence through the conjoint administration of the enclave.

After Chiang´s death, he was succeeded in the presidency by Yen Chia-kan while his son Chiang Ching-kuo succeeded to the leadership of the Kuomintang. Formerly the head of the feared secret police, Chiang Ching-kuo recognized gaining foreign support to securing the ROC's future security required reform. Western governments, headed by the United States, now favoured a constitutional democratic republic, as did many South Chinese and other international capitalists, the United States and Neralia also threatened to sever their relationship with South China if a democratization process was not completed. This alarmed the ROC government as the geopolitical situation of South China was already unstable due to the Shanghai Crisis. Thus, Chiang´s administration saw a gradual loosening of political controls and a transition towards democracy. Opponents of the Nationalists were no longer forbidden to hold meetings or publish papers. Though opposition political parties were still illegal. During the early 1970s many opponents of the KMT seeking democracy gradually organized themselves as an opposition camp, these opponents called themselves "Tangwai", literally meaning "outside the party", the Democratic Progressive Party established itself as the first opposition party, President Chiang decided against dissolving the group or persecuting its leaders. Its candidates officially ran in elections as independents in the Tangwai movement. In the following year, Chiang ended martial law and began unofficial relations with Taiwan, allowing family visits to the island.

In 1984, South China held its first clean elections in which Chiang surprisingly still won the majority of votes. However, the Tangwai now held a significant amount of seats in the legislature which made democratization inevitable. During these years several organic constitutional laws were approved, leading to the complete functioning of all democratic institutions. It would not be after Chiang´s death in 1988, during the following elections in 1990 that the Kuomintang would lose its first elections against the Democratic Progressive Party.

Relations with Taiwan tremendously improved as the new leaders of South China sought to withdraw the territorial disputes with them. An alliance with Taiwan meant having a close geopolitical partner against North China, as well as easing economic trade with one of their largest trading partners. Frequent meetings between Taiwan and South China became regular by the mid-80s and in 1993 South China officially recognized Taiwan as a legitimate country, and while still legally claiming the territory of the island (not the state) as theirs, they no longer enforced this claim in the practice, only bringing up the dispute with North China.

During this era, a number of big companies began to arise in South China. This process occurred almost simultaneously with the era of North Chinese economic reforms, where the "Socialist Market Economy" also lead to the rise of North Chinese major companies.

On 24 May 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that same-sex couples have a right to marry, and gave the Legislature Yuan two years to adequately amend Taiwanese marriage laws. According to the court ruling, if amendments are not passed within two years, same-sex marriages will automatically become legal. In effect, South China became the second country in Asia to allow same-sex marriage in May 2019.