Lockesdonkey
Liberal Jihadist
Westerners' lack of geographical knowledge of Asia in this thread is shocking.
Hoping to remedy this problem a little, I present you the Federation of Chinese Republics:
Spoiler :
The justifications for the division are as follows:
Spoiler :
The Federation of Chinese Republics (or FCR for short) is composed of 26 republics. Republics are mostly drawn along linguistic lines. On account of the large Mandarin-speaking regions, these were divided along the lines of the major dialects.
23 are formed from the former mainland of the People's Republic of China and continue to operate under what are essentially miniaturized versions of the constitution of the PRC. Major decisions in these territories continue to be taken by the Communist Party of China; their autonomy is mostly a pretense, although recently central CPC officials have allowed their underlings in the republics to exercise a bit more autonomy.
The two republics that were formerly Special Administrative Regions of the PRC, Hong Kong and Macau, have been given increased autonomy as part of the federal arrangement; they retain their own legal systems and currency. Taiwan entered under a similar arrangement after selling its sensitive American military equipment to trusted third parties.
The federal government is semi-presidential. It takes cues from the governments of the Soviet Union and the United States, but--for reasons of convenience--mostly the United States.
The legislature--the Federal Assembly--is supposed to have a 750-member Chamber of People's Deputies and a Chamber of Republics' Deputies (about which more below). Supposed to, as much like the Soviet body of a similar name, the Chamber of People's Deputies is suspended. It will only come into effect once the governments of two-thirds of the republics have formally agreed to allow elections to it. Until then, all powers of the Assembly are exercised by the Chamber of Republics' Deputies.
The CRD is composed of five members from each Republic elected by the Republic's legislature. Terms are ten years long and staggered every five years (the CPC said, "why not adopt that system?").
The President and Vice President chosen by an electoral college once every five years for a once-renewable term (this last follows contemporary PRC practice). Seats in the college are distributed among the Republics in rough proportion to population and members are chosen in whatever manner the republics' governments see fit. (This allows the CPC to control the vast majority of the College). The election is held in Beijing.
The President then nominates a Premier from the Assembly (in practice, from the CRD). The Premier then nominates the State Council (Cabinet) from the Assembly. The CPC keeps control of everything but gets the semblance of rule of law and wins back Taiwan, to boot. Ta-da!
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So yeah. Random thing.
Spoiler Don't Explain the Joke :
