Schedium

The Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Guomindang (RCCG; simpl. 中国国民党革命委员会; trad.: 中國國民黨革命委員會 ; pinyin: Zhōngguó Guómíndǎng Gémìngwěiyuánhuì) is one of the eight non-Communist Parties of the People's Republic of China. It was founded in 1947 by a left-wing faction of the Guomindang. It is a member of the United Front under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is committed to the construction of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and to the peaceful reunification of China and Taiwan.  The Origins of the RCCG The Guomindang  was founded in 1912 by Sun Yat-sen , the revolutionary who had advocated the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC) . Sun's aim was to modernise China according to his Three Principles of the People , i.e., Nationalism, Democracy, and Socialism. After the 1911 revolution led by Sun's followers and the proclamation of the Republic of China, the Guomindang became China...

Today I'm really angry. A friend of mine just told me that she was assailed by a man, who not only robbed her, but also punched her, apparently without any reason. She is a flight attendant and was spending a day in Perth after a flight. At around 5 pm the man assaulted her, took her shopping bag and hit her. Her eye was badly injured and now it's displaced. She may need surgery to fix it.  I feel so sorry because I cannot do anything for her. Actually, she is really brave and perhaps she doesn't even need my help. But I'm just so upset. I didn't expect something like this to happen in Australia, let alone in the afternoon. She went to the police, and they told her that such crimes usually don't happen in that area of the city. But they couldn't do anything.  My stay in Hong Kong wouldn't have been so great if I hadn't met her. She showed me a lot of interesting places and was always very nice to me. I can't believe that someone has done...

A couple of days ago I was walking from Ximending to Taipei Main Station when suddenly I came across a number of ... cannons and bombshells - an unusual sight in the middle of the city. I took a closer look at them and, after reading an explanation label, I realised I was standing in front of the Armed Forces Museum (AFM; Chinese: 國軍歷史文物館, literally: Museum of the Historical Relics of the National Army).

On Wednesday 18  Next Media , Hong Kong's largest media company, was the target of an unprecedented hacking attack that paralysed some of its most prominent websites, such as that of the popular newspaper Apple Daily . Tim Yiu, Next Media 's chief operating officer, said that he received the first reports of massive attacks at around 2 am. According to Eric Chen, the president of Apple Daily Taiwan , the company had reinforced its web defences against hacking following attacks in February, but the last attacks were so strong that the system was overwhelmed. The Hong Kong website of Apple Daily  was able to resume operations only after 12 hours, while its Taiwan edition was affected less severely. Apple Daily head office in Taipei ( source ) It is not clear who is behind the attacks, but many suspect that they were launched on Beijing's initiative or by pro-Beijing groups. Jimmy Lai, the founder of Next Media, stated that he didn't want to speculate, but tha...

On June 14 LUXY, a popular nightclub located in Taipei's Da'an District, as well as two pubs located in Zhongshan District, were the target of a massive police raid directed against drug-trafficking .  Taipei District Prosecutor's Office, Taipei Police Department, units of the Criminal Police and the Police Bureaus of Zhongshan , Da'an and Wanhua districts organised the operation jointly. Furthermore, Taiwan's Customs Office lent the police 16 detection dogs.  At midnight the police staged a fake inspection at LUXY. At 3 am three public buses stopped at Zhongxiao East Road, where the nightclub is located. But instead of normal passengers, 300 hundred policemen came out of the vehicles and raided the club, taking off guard the drug dealers and their clients. Other 380 policemen were deployed in Zhongshan District.  A total of 90 people were detained, 4 of whom were wanted criminals. 5 people were arrested on charges of drug possession, as they carried with t...

When I first came to Taipei I didn't know much about its history. One thing I did know, though: Taiwan had been under Japanese rule for half a century and Taipei had been the capital of the colony. But when I walked around, I wondered why there were barely any Japanese buildings. If you go to Macau , for instance, you find thousands of houses from the Portuguese colonial era. But in Taipei, all the streets seemed not to be older than 60 or 70 years. I just came to the conclusion that Taipei must have been a colonial backwater, a small village, and that present-day Taipei had been entirely constructed after 1945. It was only after reading some books and seeing old pictures that I realised the Japanese had built a lot, and that indeed many of today's roads and thoroughfares had been created during the colonial era . It's just that after 1945 most of these buildings were torn down, with the exception of  the most representative ones.  Something similar can be seen in ...

On June 10 the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China issued a white paper aimed at clarifying the concept and implementation of the "one country, two systems" model in Hong Kong.  The document shocked many Hong Kongers, who believe that Beijing is trying to restrict their freedom and autonomy and bring the former British colony in line with the policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The white paper in fact bluntly reaffirms that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) is subordinate to the central government. According to the white paper , " the central government exercises overall jurisdiction over the HKSAR, including the powers directly exercised by the central government, and the powers delegated to the HKSAR by the central government to enable it to exercise a high degree of autonomy in accordance with the law. The central government has the power of oversight over the exercise of a high degree of auto...

In the past I have been asked why in some of my posts I write Guomindang while in others I write Kuomintang . Both have the same meaning and pronunciation, but the different spelling is indeed confusing. The same thing can be said for other names, such as Kaohsiung vs Gaoxiong , or Taichung vs Taizhong . I must admit that I have been quite inconsistent. So far I haven't made a clear choice between the Taiwanese and the Chinese way to write these names. But why are there different ways to write Chinese characters using Latin letters? And which one is better? Map of Taiwan. The names are written with the Wade-Giles system Wade-Giles, Pinyin, and the Chinese Civil War When contacts between China and the West intensified in the 19th century, Europeans were confronted with a big issue: how to transliterate Chinese names? For instance, if a Westerner wanted to write a book about China for a Western audience, he had to mention Chinese persons and places. But how could...

In the 1960s the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) had no diplomatic relations. Washington continued to recognise the Republic of China on Taiwan as the sole legitimate government of the whole of China. The unstable situation in East Asia contributed to the maintenance of this situation. The Korean War and the Vietnam War caused frictions between the US and the PRC, as the Beijing regime felt threatened by the West. At times war between the two powers seemed a real possibility. This favoured Chiang Kai-shek 's Guomindang regime on Taiwan. The Americans needed the island as a military base for the war in Vietnam and as a resting place for soldiers on leave ( Davison 2003 , Chapter 6).  However, in the late 1960s Washington and Beijing began to realise they could use each other to contain the Soviet Union. Under Leonid Brezhnev 's leadership Moscow pursued an aggressive foreign policy in Asia, Africa and South America that deeply unsettled b...

If you are a fan of Wong Kar-wai 's film In the Mood for Love , you may remember the famous 'restaurant scene', in which the two protagonists find out that their spouses are having an affair. I watched that film for the first time when I was a student in Italy, and I immediately loved it. That was still the 'Blockbuster' era, when people used to borrow DVDs and then watch them at home with friends. I was preparing an exam, and I used to relax watching some films in the cold winter evenings. I was particularly interested in Asian films. I hadn't started studying Chinese, yet, and I had no plans to go to Asia, but my fascination for that part of the world was growing. Wong Kar-wai's film impressed me for its masterful style: the mysterious and delicate atmosphere, the dialogues, brief and full of allusions, and the way in which emotions were conveyed more through musical and visual techniques than through words.  Although I had watched the 'restau...