The out-of-sync calendar
There have been media reports that a postgraduate student at National Taiwan University had his thesis rejected by the school because he had used a Gregorian calendar date on its cover instead of following the Republic of China (ROC) chronology.
Because of this, the thesis was not approved and the student risked not receiving his degree, so in the end, he had to use the ROC chronology instead of the regular, internationally accepted date format.
The student criticized the school for imposing its ideology and ignoring international practice, even though there is no legal basis for doing so.
The response from the university was that “other schools do the same,” but the Ministry of Education said it does not regulate schools in such detail, and that it is up to each school to decide their thesis formats.
It is widely known that when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government occupied Taiwan after World War II, it adopted the ROC calendar, which had to be used for everything, including birth dates, government documents and even banknotes.
It was only when students were taught international history that they suddenly encountered Gregorian calendar dates and had to learn the formula for converting between ROC and Gregorian dates: ROC year plus 1911 gives the Gregorian calendar year, and subtracting 1911 from the Gregorian calendar year gives the year according to ROC chronology.
This formula followed us wherever we went: In Taiwan, every document uses the ROC date, but international academic contacts, diplomacy, international trade, travel and other overseas contacts use the Gregorian calendar format. It is all very confusing.
The thesis incident has highlighted an oddity. The legal basis for the ROC calendar system is the Act Governing the Forms of Official Documents (公文程式條例), which was promulgated by the Nationalist government in China in 1928.
It states that all official documents must use the “national calendar” year, month and day format, but it does not define it any further.
The Beiyang government for a long time used the Yellow Emperor calendar, which was declared by Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) when he changed the official calendar and era on Jan. 1, 1912, which he named Nov. 13, year 4609 of the Yellow Emperor.
The act stipulates that official documents must use the “national calendar,” but makes no mention of theses or other kinds of documents.
If National Taiwan University and other schools are creating problems for students by rejecting their theses on this basis, they are abusing their powers and demonstrating how deep the bureaucratic mindset reaches.
The ROC calendar is unique in the world and it is causing problems for our people and students. This is the kind of uniqueness Taiwan does not need and it is the legislature’s duty to remove mention of the “national calendar” from the act or change it to “Gregorian calendar.”
This would simplify matters and make it easier for Taiwan to integrate with the international community. It is time to stop holding on to this anachronism.
Wang Po-jen
Taichung
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