Minguo calendar - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Republic of China calendar is the method of numbering years currently used in the Republic of China

Republic of China

The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...

(ROC) (Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, Kinmen

Kinmen

Kinmen , also known as Quemoy , is a small archipelago of several islands administered by the Republic of China : Greater Kinmen, Lesser Kinmen, and some islets. Administratively, it is Kinmen County of Fujian Province, ROC. The county is claimed by the People's Republic of China as part of its...

, and Matsu

Matsu Islands

The Matsu Islands are a minor archipelago of 19 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait administered as Lienchiang County , Fujian Province of the Republic of China . Only a small area of what is historically Lienchiang County is under the control of the ROC...

). It was used in mainland China

Mainland China

Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...

from 1912 until the founding of the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

in 1949.

Following the Chinese imperial tradition of using the sovereign's era name

Chinese era name

A Chinese era name is the regnal year, reign period, or regnal title used when traditionally numbering years in an emperor's reign and naming certain Chinese rulers . Some emperors have several era names, one after another, where each beginning of a new era resets the numbering of the year back...

and year of reign, official ROC documents use the Republic system of numbering years in which the first year was 1912, the year of the founding of the Republic of China. For example, 2011 is the "100th year of the Republic". Months and days are numbered according to the Gregorian calendar.

To find out the ROC year equivalent to any Gregorian calendar

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...

(CE) year, subtract 1911 from the Gregorian year. For example: 2011 - 1911 = 100th year of the Republic.

Calendar details

The Gregorian calendar

Gregorian calendar

was adopted by the nascent Republic of China

Republic of China

effective 1 January 1912 for official business, but the general populace continued to use the traditional Chinese calendar

Chinese calendar

The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar, incorporating elements of a lunar calendar with those of a solar calendar. It is not exclusive to China, but followed by many other Asian cultures as well...

. The status of the Gregorian calendar was unclear between 1916 and 1921 while China was controlled by several competing warlord

Warlord

A warlord is a person with power who has both military and civil control over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. The term can also mean one who espouses the ideal that war is necessary, and has the means and authority to engage in war...

s each supported by foreign colonial powers. From about 1921 until 1928 warlords continued to fight over northern China, but the Kuomintang

Kuomintang

The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...

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 Peoples 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. Chinese imperial tradition was to use the emperor's era name

Chinese era name

and year of reign. One alternative to this approach was to use the reign of the half-historical, half-legendary Yellow Emperor

Yellow Emperor

The Yellow Emperor or Huangdi1 is a legendary Chinese sovereign and culture hero, included among the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Tradition holds that he reigned from 2697–2597 or 2696–2598 BC...

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. (This was part of their attempt to delegitimize the Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

.)

When Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...

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 (corresponding to 1 January 1912) to be the first year of the Republic of China. The original intention of the Mínguó 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

Chinese calendar

, as no Emperor ruled more than 61
years in Chinese history—the longest being Kangxi Emperor

Kangxi Emperor

The Kangxi Emperor ; Manchu: elhe taifin hūwangdi ; Mongolian: Энх-Амгалан хаан, 4 May 1654 –20 December 1722) was the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the first to be born on Chinese soil south of the Pass and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from 1661 to 1722.Kangxi's...

who
ruled from 1662–1722 (Kangxi 61). (Qianlong Emperor

Qianlong Emperor

The Qianlong Emperor was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty, and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. The fourth son of the Yongzheng Emperor, he reigned officially from 11 October 1735 to 8 February 1796...

abdicated in
1795, i.e. Qianlong 60, but the reign name of Qianlong is still used
unofficially until his death in 1799 i.e. Qianlong 64.)

As Chinese era names are traditionally
two characters long, 民國 (Mínguó, "Republic") is employed as an abbreviation of
中華民國 (Zhōnghuá Mínguó, "Republic of China"). The first year, 1912, is called 民國元年 (Mínguó Yuánnián) and 2010, the "99th year of the Republic" is 民國九十九年, 民國99年, or simply 99.

Based on Chinese National Standard CNS 7648: Data Elements and
Interchange Formats—Information Interchange—Representation of Dates
and Times, (similar to ISO 8601

ISO 8601

ISO 8601 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times is an international standard covering the exchange of date and time-related data. It was issued by the International Organization for Standardization and was first published in 1988...

), year numbering may use the AD
system as well as the ROC era. For example, 3 May 2004 may be
written 2004-05-03 or ROC 93-05-03.

The ROC era numbering happens to be the same as the numbering used by
the Juche calendar of North Korea

North Korea

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

, because its
founder, Kim Il-sung

Kim Il-sung

Kim Il-sung was a Korean communist politician who led the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death...

, was born in 1912. The years in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

's
Taishō period

Taisho period

The , or Taishō era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taishō Emperor. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group of elder statesmen to the Diet...

(30 July 1912 to 25 December 1926) also coincide
with those of the ROC era.

In addition to the ROC's Mínguó calendar, Taiwanese continue to use the lunisolar Chinese calendar

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. When
used to mark expiration dates on products for export, they can be
misunderstood as having an expiration date 11 years earlier than
intended
.
Misinterpretation is more likely in the cases when the prefix (ROC or 民國) is omitted.

There have been legislative proposals to abolish the Republican
calendar in favor of the Gregorian calendar.

Relation to the Gregorian calendar

Generally, the ROC era is obtained by subtracting 1911 from the Gregorian calendar year.

ROC era	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
AD	1912	1913	1914	1915	1916	1917	1918	1919	1920	1921
ROC era	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
AD	1922	1923	1924	1925	1926	1927	1928	1929	1930	1931
ROC era	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
AD	1932	1933	1934	1935	1936	1937	1938	1939	1940	1941
ROC era	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40
AD	1942	1943	1944	1945	1946	1947	1948	1949	1950	1951
ROC era	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50
AD	1952	1953	1954	1955	1956	1957	1958	1959	1960	1961
ROC era	51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60
AD	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968	1969	1970	1971
ROC era	61	62	63	64	65	66	67	68	69	70
AD	1972	1973	1974	1975	1976	1977	1978	1979	1980	1981
ROC era	71	72	73	74	75	76	77	78	79	80
AD	1982	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991
ROC era	81	82	83	84	85	86	87	88	89	90
AD	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
ROC era	91	92	93	94	95	96	97	98	99	100
AD	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
ROC era	101	102	103	104	105	106	107	108	109	110
AD	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
ROC era	111	112	113	114	115	116	117	118	119	120
AD	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026	2027	2028	2029	2030	2031
ROC era	121	122	123	124	125	126	127	128	129	130
AD	2032	2033	2034	2035	2036	2037	2038	2039	2040	2041
ROC era	131	132	133	134	135	136	137	138	139	140
AD	2042	2043	2044	2045	2046	2047	2048	2049	2050	2051
ROC era	141	142	143	144	145	146	147	148	149	150
AD	2052	2053	2054	2055	2056	2057	2058	2059	2060	2061
ROC era	151	152	153	154	155	156	157	158	159	160
AD	2062	2063	2064	2065	2066	2067	2068	2069	2070	2071
ROC era	161	162	163	164	165	166	167	168	169	170
AD	2072	2073	2074	2075	2076	2077	2078	2079	2080	2081

Calendar details

Arguments for and against

Relation to the Gregorian calendar

See also