The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline
- Thread starter Augenis
- Start date
In my next guest update, whatever it may be, yes. Also, what do you think of the three GoT characters I inserted here, then?
Welp, that means half the forum hates him.
Edit: also, I don't know why I'm asking this here, but I have to ask given you've clearly based the future Empress of China on her: why Myrcella Baratheon of all people?
I inserted expies of Stannis Baratheon and Myrcella Lannister as well in my latest China guest update.
Well, it's because I like her that much. Also, I added Yang Xiao Long and Weiss Schnee (sorry, Siglinde "Schnee" Weiss) to this TL as well.
As with the whole thing with anime a while back, might not be advisable to not overdo the references.
Fortunately, I didn't make him marry a Swedish or Danish princess with a reputation as a "she-wolf".
But how? Indian attempts to appeal to countries with an axe to grind against a US member bearing fruit?
An analysis of Chinese government
An Analysis of Chinese Government
Under the 1927 Constitution, the Empire of the Great Shun is a constitutional monarchy where the Emperor is the highest authority in the land but has to answer to the bicameral Legislative Yuan and the Council of Ministers, headed by the Chancellor of the Empire of the Great Shun. However, government in the Empire of the Great Shun retains much of the traditions of the absolutist Empire in the past and bureaucratic interests (the “Mandarins”) are still prominent in the Empire of the Great Shun.
The Emperor/Empress of the Empire of the Great Shun is theoretically the most powerful person in the Empire of the Great Shun as he/she has the “Mandate of Heaven” with substantial powers like the ability to declare war (along with make peace treaties), command the military, conclude treaties, dissolve the lower house of the Legislative Yuan, appoint members of the Council of Mandarins for life (and remove them from their posts), veto legislature by the Legislative Yuan, enact legislature (via “Imperial Edicts”) in periods when the Legislative Yuan is in recess, and appoint the Chancellor. In practice, the powers of the Emperor depend on the personality of the monarch and most actions the Emperor are also approved by a “non-binding” resolution of the Legislative Yuan. In addition, the Chancellor is usually appointed from the largest party of the Legislative Yuan as well.
The Legislative Yuan is the legislative body of the Empire of the Great Shun and is organized in a bicameral fashion. The upper house, the Council of Mandarins, is a “lifetime” position comprised of 716 members. 400 members of the Council of Mandarins are appointed by the Emperor from the ranks of the civil service while 316 members are elected for life by provincial governemtns. The lower house, the Council of Representatives, is elected via a mixed-member proportional representation system with 350 members being elected via a party-list system and the other 350 (with the expansion of the Legislative Yuan for representatives from New Zealand, the Ryukyus, Mongolia, and Xiboliya) seats elected via a “winner takes all” system. The Legislative Yuan, under the 1927 Constitution, is responsible for the budget, debating and passing legislation, approving taxation, and consulting with the emperor on “matters of state importance”.
The Council of Ministers is headed by the Chancellor, who is appointed by the Emperor and in turn appoints the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers is responsible for most domestic policy and helps shape foreign policy along with the Emperor/Empress of the Middle Kingdom. The Foreign Ministry is a notable exception to the rule that the Chancellor has the right to appoint ministers as he pleases as the constitution states the Emperor/Empress has the right to supervise foreign policy, so choices for the Foreign Minister have to be approved by the Emperor as well. Usually, Chancellors are the dominant forces in their cabinets as well.
The Chinese Imperial Bureaucracy has been one of the oldest institutions in the world and continues to serve the Empire to this day. As per tradition, imperial examinations are used to determine who gets to join the civil service but large-scale reforms have been adopted in the reigns of the Yongwu, Shangwu, and Jiaqing emperors to make the imperial examination more relevant in a modern, industrialized China. One of the most radical reforms enacted to the imperial examination was the abolition of the “eight-legged essay”, which was deemed to be “irrelevant” to the needs of a bureaucracy to run a modern China. Women were also allowed to take the imperial examination for the first time in 1897 as well and as the middle class grew, much of the new middle class saw it as an honor for one of their sons or daughters to pass the civil service exam, ensuring that the class of civil servants is broader than it has ever been in Chinese history. The curriculum was also modernized with commerce, industry, world history, geography, political science, sociology, general sciences, economics, and other subjects deemed necessary for the bureaucracy of a modern China introduced for the imperial examinations. In addition, the rank system of the imperial civil service was also simplified as well.
Local government in the Empire of the Great Shun is carried out by 33 provinces, three autonomous regions, and three “special cities” (Beijing, Suzhou, and Xi’an) after administrative reforms carried out by the Jiaqing Emperor in the 1920s. Beijing was considered to be the capital city of the Empire of the Great Shun and was administered accordingly while Suzhou, one of the main arteries of trade with the outside world and a major economic center of finance, was deemed to be too important to be handled by the provincial government. Xi’an, where Li Zicheng proclaimed the Shun Dynasty in 1644, was administered in a special manner as the Crown Prince was, when he was deemed suited for administrating the city, appointed the governor of Xi’an, which in the Jiaqing Emperor’s administrative reforms also denoted the suburbs of Xi’an as well as the city had developed into a metropolis. As for provincial administration, the Jiaqing Emperor’s administrative reforms had resulted in a system where both the governors and the local assemblies are now directly elected by the people ever since the early 1930s. The administration of Mongolia, New Zealand, and the Ryukyu Islands deserves some discussion as they are “autonomous regions” which have their own local code of laws and differences in how they are run. For instance, New Zealand, which the Chinese took from the Dutch during the Great European War has a legal and political system based on the pre-Nieuwe Staat government of the Netherlands and as a side-effect has large communities of exiled pro-democracy activists in it’s major cities while Mongolia has some holdovers from the old days of the Khanate of Mongolia in it’s local government as the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu remains the spiritual leader of the Mongol peoples and holds ceremonial power. The Ryukyu Islands has a more unique political arrangement as the Ryukyu Islands, under the terms of the treaty annexing it to China after the referendum of 1934, has virtual independence in local affairs with only military and foreign affairs (along with the collection of national taxes) at the hands of Beijing.
No analysis of Chinese government could be complete without analysing the ruling Progressive Union Party, which is the dominant party in the Empire of the Great Shun. The PUP has evolved over the years from a moderate Democratic Unitarian Party to a “big-tent” centrist political party due to the threat of the Unified Indian State. Ever since the PUP was formed, it has won sizable majorities in the Legislative Yuan and so has been given the privilage of setting up the government. Political scientists credit the dominance of the PUP to several factors. The most important factor to them is the “big-tent” nature of the PUP, allowing it to present itself as a broad coalition of progressive forces and neutralizing some of the opposition to the PUP. Another factor to them was the ability of the PUP to co-opt popular policies proposed by their opposition to neuter them. Other factors for the dominance of the PUP to political scientists are the fact the opposition of the PUP is often too divided to launch a coordinated campaign against them and the fact the PUP has brought about the economic strengthening of China along with being the party which ended the menace of the Japanese Union. This dominance has led to them being compared to the Lithuanian “White Shroud” movement, which holds a similar dominance of politics in Lithuania. Of course, the PUP is still divided into factions. The most prominent of said factional divides are between the “isolationist” and “interventionist” factions with Xiao Xuegang being the most prominent leader of the Interventionist faction as well. Said factionalism within the PUP is the main restraint on a Chancellor, who more often than not is also the head of the PUP and relies on keeping the factions and the base of the PUP happy to maintain power.
To be quite honest, I would have expected the Shun China to have a system somewhat closer to OTL's ROC one, with the Censorate/Control Yuan (an institution going back to the Yuan dinasty) and Examination Yuan (since the civil service exams remain so important) as separate branches of the government, in addition to the more familiar legislative, executive and judiciary ones.
As for New Zealand, does the Imperial government treat it as OTL Hong Kong (i.e. packing its governing body with loyalists, curtailing the popular representation, and seeing that the dangerous ideas don't spread to the mainland) or - given that quite a few members of the Imperial Family have strong Republican leanings - sees it as something of a model for the mainland at some unspecified point in the future?
As for New Zealand, does the Imperial government treat it as OTL Hong Kong (i.e. packing its governing body with loyalists, curtailing the popular representation, and seeing that the dangerous ideas don't spread to the mainland) or - given that quite a few members of the Imperial Family have strong Republican leanings - sees it as something of a model for the mainland at some unspecified point in the future?
And yes, if you're wondering about Prince Li Bao, he'll be a future Chinese Emperor, I may add.