Republic of the Municipality of Ch'ingshan

## Basic Overview

* President - Chu Yangtsao
* Population - 2.2k (1914) - 768.7k (1947)
* GDP - 1 Trillion USD (2021)
* Government System - Constitutional Democracy
* Currency: Li
* Majority Ethnic Group - Han, followed by Hakka, Cantonese, Min, Manchu, and a small community of Liberians.
* State Ethnicity - Ch’ingshaner
* Located on the Southern tip of Liberia.
* Religious Demographics: 36% are Buddhists 26% are Daoists 24% are Confucians 10% are Christians 4% are Nonaffiliated

## Political System - Continued

Ch’ingshan’s political system is based off of the United States of America, with a legislature made up of a Congress, known as the Ch’ingshan Legislative Congress, and a judiciary, known as the Ch’ingshan Supreme Court, and the executive branch, comprised of the President and the President’s cabinet, the Ch’ingshan Presidential Committee. Congress is allowed to nominate citizens and members to the committee, and the President is allowed to nominate citizens as well. The President gets the choice on who gets to sit in the Committee.

The nation itself is divided into Boroughs, of which there are 6, and a special legislative region, simply named the Presidential Palace.

The Waterfront, comprising the coast of Ch’ingshan

The Bund, where the largest skyscrapers can be found, northeast to the Waterfront

Pinp'u, where the casinos can be found, northwest to the Bund

Hopin, a rich neighborhood along the river with many businesses.

Laochen, the Old Town, a neighborhood where the political party headquarters can be found

The Presidential Palace, in the center of where Laochen and Hopin meet

And Peimien, the northern suburbs and farmlands, where the least people live, a military base can be found, and the border with Liberia.

The voting system used for the presidential system is unique, and where Ch’ingshan heavily diverges from America. The Alternative Vote system is used for presidential elections, and is how votes are counted. There is an Electoral College, but votes are not adjusted to be equal like they are in America, and the Electoral College must not miscount and throw out votes. The Electoral College, when voting, must base their vote on the people's vote, and are not allowed to diverge their vote in any way from the people's popular vote. Votes remain proportional to the size of the population, with larger populated Boroughs getting more votes.

Every Borough gets to elect a mayor, which are usually local community leaders. Boroughs are divided into Blocks, comprising multiple streets. Mayoral elections use the same voting system as Presidential elections.

Since there is no House of Representatives, as the nation itself is small in population, the people only vote on congressional members. Each Block get's it's own congressional member, of which there are 55. Politicians must campaign in order to get the vote, as the Alternative Vote system is not used for Congressional elections. First Past the Post is used for Congressional elections.

Every 2 years there is a Mayoral election. Every 4 years there is a Congressional Election, and every 4 years there is also a Presidential election. There are no term limits for President, though the first President, Chee On Sing, set a term precedent when he refused to run again after his second term.

There are at least 5 major political parties:

The founding party, the Three Principles Party (Progressive Left)

The Ch’ingshan Communist Party (Radical Left)

The National Rejuvenation Party (Laizzes-Faire Center-Right)

The Hakka-Han Friendship Party (Center Left)

The Stalwart Party (Far Right)

In Congress there are Opposition coalitions, and another kind of coalition, known as the Clique.

There are also ethnic parties, which find their way into Congress, though are less influential. They often make up their own coalition, known as the Clique. These parties are:

Min Representational Association

Cantonese Community Committee

Manchu Representational Committee

Migrant’s Association

Liberian Benevolence Association, made up of ethnic Liberians who remained in Ch’ingshan despite the demographics change

Other parties include the

Confucian Values Party (Conservative Right)

Ch’ingshan Federalist Party (Libertarian Right)

Feng On Association, made up of gangsters looking to present themselves as legitimate community leaders.

## Lore

Since the 1860s, Mandarin farmers, laborers, and businessmen had been coming to Liberia, looking for work and better opportunities they could not find at home. Farmers and laborers spread out around the nation, but soon faced harassment, discrimination, and in some cases, even lynchings by the majority white population of Liberia. And so, these farmers and laborers fled to a port city that had come to be dominated by Mandarin businessmen, which came to be known as Mandartown, but to the people who lived there, it was called Qingshan, or “Ch’ingshan” The city was generally ignored by Liberia until it became a hub for Mandarin migrants, who began to pool into the city, causing a massive demographics change. As the white population fleed into the countryside, the nation took notice, and attempted to gentrify the neighborhood and remove the Mandarins with discriminatory laws. Two local community leaders - Chee Ong Sing and Shen Tiensung established the “Ch’ingshan Independence League” and began gathering guns and munitions, with goals to establish an independent and fiercely democratic Ch’ingshan. They were heavily inspired by the Mandarin philosopher and statesman, Wen Kuo. They drafted this flag, based off of a popular local temple. They borrowed the concept and colors from the Mandarin flag, with one important change. The red sun symbolized the Han Ethnicity, and the green rays the Hakka, the two major ethnic groups of Ch’ingshan. Two years later, around the fall of the Tien dynasty, they began their revolution. Liberia was caught off guard, as they had only considered Ch’ingshan an afterthought. Though Ch’ingshan was outnumbered by Liberia, the sheer popularity of the revolt, and the heavy anti-war sentiment among the people of Liberia forced the Kingdom’s hand, and independence was granted to Ch’ingshan in 1914. Though Ch’ingshan is a Democratic Republic, since the revolution, a noteable criminal underworld has seeded it’s roots into Ch’ingshan. Ch’ingshan’s heavy pro-business laizzez-faire policies have led to the small City-State to become a tax haven for disgraced Mandarin warlords and violent gangsters. The city has also become an haven for Mandarin citizens and political radicals fleeing the chaos of the Mandarin Warlord Era.

Since then, Ch'ingshan has only grown. Migration from Mandarin into Ch'ingshan remained strong, as Mandarin was not located within the archipelago, but on a continent outside of it. This was in spite of the Archipelagic war, that resulted in the death of 98% of the Eldritch Archipelago's population. As such, Ch'ingshan quickly restabilized it's population, recouping fully from it's loss of people. This resulted in an significant demographic change, as the localized diaspora culture of Ch'ingshan somewhat died and Ch'ingshan's culture drifted closer to Mandarin for a time. Despite this, many citizens of Ch'ingshan prefer the moniker "Ch'ingshaner." Another result of migration into Ch'ingshan was that Ch'ingshan was practically flooded with workers, the allowed Ch'ingshan to rebuild it's infrastructure and industry in a short ammount of time. By 1920, manufacturing and shipping grew to be some of Ch'ingshan's top industries, poised to become Ch'ingshan's main industries by 1922. Many international companies began outsourcing work to Ch'ingshan because of this, as other nations struggled to both recover from their great loss in population and rebuild infrastructure and industry after the catastrophe of the war. During this time, Ch'ingshan underwent an initiative to modernize the military, scrapping it's warjunks and outdated torpedo craft in favor of new, state-of-the-art, modernized designs and equipment. This was done in order to maintain Ch'ingshan's sovereignty. During this time, great anti-war sentiment spurred throughout the city, even reaching the halls of government. As such, Ch'ingshan's foreign policy changed to accomadate, as Ch'ingshan focused on fostering beneficial trade and geopolitical relationships, not just with it's neighbors, but the entire Archipelago itself. Later that year, in 1920, Ch'ingshan's Government, under the direction of president Chu Yangtsao, nationalized the international companies' holdings, redistributing them to Ch'ingshan's own homegrown corporations and companies, giving them great power and wealth. Remarkably, the change proved to increase Ch'ingshan's gdp, as with their own companies now running all the factories in Ch'ingshan, it led to better management practices within the factories, and improved manufacturing quality. This move by Chu Yangtsao served to completely bankrupt the international corporations, many of them shutting down or being bought out by those same homegrown corporations years later.

## Relationship with Sedland

In the beginning of Ch'ingshan's life, Ch'ingshan's foreign policy makers believed that Sedland and Ch'ingshan were very alike, and so, Ch'ingshan sought friendly relations with the country, sending over an ambassador, Pang Lung Wan, with hopes to improve relations. This ultimately failed, as Pang Lung Wan's personal notes, which were sent to lawmakers and congressmen, and subsequently, Chu Yangtsao himself, changed Ch'ingshan's more favorable look at Sedland. After the Elrick Coup and brief colonial authority over Sedland, Ch'ingshan's views on Sedland soured significantly, no doubt fueled by Pang's testimonials of what exactly what was going on during the crisis. This souring relationship can be seen with Ch'ingshan's denunciation of both Elrick and the "Seddish Aristocracy" for their hostility towards eachother, blaming both for the crisis. An important thing to be noticed about this is that the denunciation refers only to the Aristocratic families, and not the entire nation itself. This was because the current opinion, despite the crisis, remained that Sedland would make for an helpful and strong ally in the archipelago. This changed after Pang was sent back to see, first hand, the Seddish Second Civil War go down. After this conflict, Pang's opinion on Sedland soured entirely, and he came to despise the little country. Pang wrote an important document on Sedland, known as the Pangguan Letter, in which Pang states... “Having been situated in Sedland for the longest time, I have concluded these things about the little island nation: it is of no importance to Ch’ingshan as a friend. The island itself is insignificant and monotonous, it’s population is small, and the political system remains largely feudal. It is a place of great backwardsness, even by the standards of one of the great kingdoms, like Ashgawa or Elrick. It is perhaps more backwards than even the mother country (Mandarin) itself. The people are disconnected from not just the entire world, but even the archipelago itself. The people are all filled with mistrust and hate of outsiders, no matter the color of the skin or the origin of their ancestors. Each one of them is deeply suspicious of immigrants. I heard even, that they burnt the property of a tea seller, who came in from Mandarin, just to run him out of town. And that is not to even get started on the infrastructure. The infrastructure is all made of wood, except for two buildings; the prison and the excuse they have for a ‘palace.’ Everyone lives in wooden houses, most of them the size of huts. The civil war was one between a despotic king (referring to Wilhelm von Jaeger) and a theocratic figurehead (referring to Saint Maze.) This conflict was waged using modern ships, to achieve one main goal: to maintain Sedland’s isolation to the outside world. Sedland is ripe to be economically dominated, they have very little industry and rely on subsistence living. It would be easy to commence trade with, and thus, flood Sedland with our goods. Our industries have been growing day by day, we are situated where all the trade flows through, and for far too long have our manufacturing operations have been used to outsource for international companies. Ch’ingshan has the potential to become a major power player on the global stage, until Mandarin catches up to us, we ought to prove that us Mandarins are not ‘sick men.’ The first place we ought to prove this to, is not Liberia, but Sedland. They are tiny, they can do little, and their population is so small, the island is practically ran by two men, both with similar goals of maintaining Sedland’s sovereignty through isolation. As the situation in Mandarin proves, this strategy is impossible to maintain, and we ought to prove this to them. Sedland is similar to Ch’ingshan, but it is more similar to Mandarin. We ought to keep this in mind when we handle Sedland geopolitically, and when we make foreign policy decisions on Sedland. Do not pass up the great opportunity Sedland provides…” After the Pangguan Letter, Ch'ingshan, atleast privately, relinquished any desire to create a cooperative relationship with Sedland that would be beneficial for both nations. After this letter was sent, Ch'ingshan's opinion on Sedland was that the nation was incredibly backwards and ripe to be economically dominated and controlled by Ch'ingshan, as a testing ground for a different kind of foreign policy... in which Ch'ingshan's main goal was not to colonize, but to force the other nations to buy from it.