The Republic of Chinacalendar or Minguo calendar is one of the calendars used in Greater China area. The calendar is to commemorate 1912, the year of the establishment of the Republic of China, the first republic in the history of China. The term 'minguo' simply means 'republic'. ROC calendar follows the tradition of using the sovereign's era name and year of reign, as previous imperial dynasties have done. Months and days are numbered according to the Gregorian calendar. ROC calendar has been widely used in the early official documents of the ROC since 1912. The calendar is the official calendar of Taiwan since 1945, and also used by Overseas Chinese and Taiwanese communities. Chorographies and historical researches published in mainland China covering the period of Republic of China also adopt the Republic of China calendar.
Calendar details
The Gregorian calendar was adopted by the nascent Republic of China effective 1 January 1912 for official business, but the general populace continued to use the traditional Chinese calendar. The status of the Gregorian calendar was unclear between 1916 and 1921 while China was controlled by several competing warlords each supported by foreign colonial powers. From about 1921 until 1928 warlords continued to fight over northern China, but the Kuomintang or Nationalist government controlled southern China and used the Gregorian calendar. After the Kuomintang reconstituted the Republic of China on 10 October 1928, the Gregorian calendar was officially adopted, effective 1 January 1929. The People's Republic of China has continued to use the Gregorian calendar since 1949. Despite the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, the numbering of the years was still an issue. The Chinese imperial tradition was to use the emperor's era name and year of reign. One alternative to this approach was to use the reign of the half-historical, half-legendary Yellow Emperor in the third millennium BC to number the years. In the early 20th century, some Chinese Republicans began to advocate such a system of continuously numbered years, so that year markings would be independent of the Emperor's regnal name. When Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president of the Republic of China, he sent telegrams to leaders of all provinces and announced the 13th day of 11th Month of the 4609th year of the Yellow Emperor's reign to be the first year of the Republic of China. The original intention of the Minguo calendar was to follow the imperial practice of naming the years according to the number of years the Emperor had reigned, which was a universally recognizable event in China. Following the establishment of the Republic, hence the lack of an Emperor, it was then decided to use the year of the establishment of the current regime. This reduced the issue of frequent change in the calendar, as no Emperor ruled more than 61 years in Chinese history — the longest being the Kangxi Emperor, who ruled from 1662–1722. As Chinese era names are traditionally two characters long, is employed as an abbreviation of . The first year, 1912, is called and, the " year of the Republic" is,, or simply. Based on National Standards of the Republic of China CNS 7648: Data Elements and Interchange Formats—Information Interchange—Representation of Dates and Times, year numbering may use the Gregorian system as well as the ROC era. For example, may be written -- or ROC --. The ROC era numbering happens to be the same as the numbering used by the Juche calendar of North Korea, because its founder, Kim Il-sung, was born in 1912. The years in Japan's Taishō era also coincide with those of the ROC era. In addition to the ROC's Minguo calendar, Taiwanese continue to use the lunar Chinese calendar for certain functions such as the dates of many holidays, the calculation of people's ages, and religious functions.
Arguments for and against
The use of the ROC era system extends beyond official documents. Misinterpretation is more likely in the cases when the prefix is omitted. There have been legislative proposals by pro-Taiwan Independence political parties, such as the Democratic Progressive Party to abolish the Republican calendar in favor of the Gregorian calendar.
Relation to the Gregorian calendar
To convert any Gregorian calendar year to ROC calendar, subtract 1911.
