Taiwan’s political system is not based on the American one. Far, far from it.
See this is the kind of stuff that diminishes your credibility.
Taiwan has a president and a vice president does it not? Where did the term “president” come from? Four years and two terms…hmmm…coincidence?
Our Dear Father George Washington coined the term as it is known today when he didn’t want to become King. Amazing move.
Not a monarchy. Not a prime minister. Not a generalissimo. A president and a vice president from the same political party. Sounds familiar?
Taiwan has a constitution does it not? It includes (oh dear me) freedom of speech!
Now I know what you’re thinking: many countries have presidents and freedom of speech and terms etc
Guess dear wise one where they got those political structures from? ;). Guess where the ideas of freedom of speech came from?
The French Revolution I hear you say.
Wellll…guess what inspired the French Revolution? 
Yeah…for from it eh? Jeez
Now one can argue that it all came from the British (our peers) with Magna Carta and yes it is debatable.
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@foc is correct.
Taiwans political system is not based on the US system.
For a start the President and VP are elected by popular vote and there is no electoral college and there are no states.
Nothing about the system here is based on the US. Does Taiwan have a bill of rights?
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You’re getting lost in the weeds.
It has a president, a vice president and a functioning electoral system.
And the bill of rights is part of something it does have: a constitution.
Of course taiwan doesn’t have an electoral college it’s got 20 million people for goodness sake.
The ROC government was conceived by Dr Sun Yat Sen who was strongly influenced by the US.
But don’t take my chauvinistic word for it.
Again my friend you’re getting lost in the weeds.
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Having a constition does not mean there is a bill of rights as part of it. Australia also has a constitution. There is no bill of rights.
So now you admit Taiwan does not have the same system as the USA ei electoral college system. Putin is Russia’s President, Russia has a constitution, so must have a US based system as well? China too. lol
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What country’s system is Taiwan’s based on then? Not the British or Japanese constitutional monarchy or any European system that I am aware of. As with the Philippines, most of Latin America, and some other countries, it most closely resembles the U.S. model. Of course it is not exactly the same - no two countries have the exact same form of government down to all of the particulars.
It’s a patchwork. More like France. Probably not helpful to assume that it is based on any particular country.
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Taiwan’s five-branch (Yuan) system—Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Examination, and Control—comes from Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s vision, setting it apart from Western three-branch models. Drafted under the Nationalist government (KMT) on the “mainland”, the ROC Constitution carried forward Chinese legal traditions. While the framers took inspiration from Western constitutions, they adapted these ideas rather than copying any single system.
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I will bite on this since it is a fascinating topic that I am very interested in.
It is true that Sun Yat-sen, like many 19th century Chinese deeply admired the United States for its power and wealth. The late 19th century saw Chinese intellectuals and leaders looking to other countries for ideas about how to make China rich and powerful. Others thought Japan, Germany, the UK, or France were better. Later, most people (including Sun) thought the Soviet Union had everything figured out.
The most clearly American of Sun’s three principles was democracy (minquan), which basically means a republican form of government. But he came up with five branches of government. The two extra ones–examination and control–were intended to deal with two major problems he saw in American democracy: patronage and the problems the executive would inevitably have investigating itself.
His nationalism principle is all about uniting the people of China into a nation state like Germany, Italy, or France. This is alien to the American experiment.
His ‘welfare’ principle was at first influenced by Georgism, a dissident although once influential school of political economy in the US. This is where his very unAmerican ideas about land redistribution and land to the tillers came from. Later it is probably best understood as having morphed into a form of socialism with an important but limited role for private markets. Not very American at all.
After independence, the Republic of China basically adopted the German legal system with some minor borrowings from Austria and France. Later in Taiwan, that legal system was deeply influenced by the Japanese interpretation of German law, Japan also having earlier adopted German law
In 1947, the ROC enacted a new constitution. Sun Yat-sen had been dead for more than 20 years and his ideas basically just get lip service in the preamble. There are rights similar to those enumerated in the the English and American Bills of Rights, but they are expressed in the language of the UN declaration of of human rights. In other words, they are positive general rights not negative rights like those in the US Bill of Rights. Signficantly, these include social rights to things like ‘existence’ (health, housing etc) and work.
We get our current political system in 1992. Direct election of president, division of executive power between president and premier, and a unicameral legislature are all different from the US.
Finally, and perhaps most signficantly, Taiwan does not have a federal system. It is a highly centralized unified state like France.
The US and Taiwan have vastly different systems despite a few superficial similarities.
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The legal system is a bit German.
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5 posts were split to a new topic: Constant America Talk
The United States is the first presidential republic.
The rest of the world emulated the model to the best of their abilities and circumstances.
Others just merely took the names of the institutions .
Russia took our model after the Cold War. China says “president” to appease the west.
Yes from the West who had adapted their ideas from the Presidential Republic of the United States.
The guy did study in America and official files show that he is (Oh Dear God) American!
Something that he wanted by the way as he was “admired ideas of American economics and government.”
Did you know that he converted to Christianity? And not catholic or orthodox but a good ol fashioned American Protestant Baptist.
Yeah I’d argue the US had a bit of an influence on him
They also don’t say “總統” in Chinese to refer to Xi. They call him “主席”, which translates to “Chairman”. Seriously, try saying “習總統” to a Taiwanese person. They’ll think you’re making a funny joke.
The core parts of the legal system (criminal law, civil law, and many other things like the law of nationality) and its organization are almost purely German.
Under American pressure and influence, American law has becoming increaisngly important. For example, the securities laws are simplified version of US securities laws. The Coyright Act now has many American features tacked on. But it also has moral rights. Just like Germany.
Taiwan’s data protection laws are based on the EU’s GDPR. Its food and safety laws follow US models. Labor laws are German.
There has been a similar evolution in Japan. I once heard a Japanese law professor said that while it was originally true that Japan had a continental German-style civil law system, it was probably more accurate to describe it as a hybrid system. I think that is true of Taiwan too.
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There were many earlier similar offices just called by other names. The Venetian Doge and the Dutch Republic’s Stadtholder come to mind immediately. So does the Lord Protector of the English commonweath. An important organization model for American Federal government was the British East Indian Company. Many of the founders knew rather a lot about the Roman Republic. There’s very little new under the sun.
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Revisionist history points to Indigenous models of democratic governance in the Americas as a source of inspiration too, albeit one that is seldom remembered or acknowledged.
Guy
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You don’t even have to go that far… colonial governments whether in the 13 colonies of America or NSW or later Hong Kong were governed under models slightly different to Westminster. Originally with governors exercising all powers then later the governors would implement legislative councils of some form, which later developed in representative chambers in some colonies unicameral in other colonies bi-cameral, one feature that was present in many colonies at that point in time and for later colonies was that the governor continued to excercise real executive power. This power was curtailed in later colonies after they went through self-representative reform such as the latter years of the NSW colony. But in the American examples at the time and in the early development of Australian colonies and for the life of the Hong Kong colony the governor exercised actual executive power.
So it’s not hard to see that you just change the name of that position… Also, one thing to remember is that there wasn’t originally a popular vote to elect the president in the united states, that was a much later development.
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Yes a lot came from former structures…
But the Presidential Republic model was first officially done in America. It worked so well and followed many of the new ideas of the enlightenment that it was emulated.
Or where was the presidential republic model done prior?
Plenty of flawed/failed government uses American models.
Point is political systems are irrelevant if the people involved are corrupt, and even right now American system isn’t working for America, and the two party system proved to be rather detrimental for Americans.