Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine has a theory that as China grows in power, it will eventually push its own alternative calendar as an ideological statement, as the calendar we currently use is based on the birth of Jesus Christ, something the Chinese government does not particularly care about.

View on HN

Have you and your friend never heard of Chinese new year? China already has its own very popular calendar that predates the Gregorian.

Unless you can point me to otherwise, I believe it is still the year 2018 of our lord and savior Jesus Christ as far as China is concerned in all of its international business and political dealings.

The Nationalist Party of China in the 1920s adopted the Gregorian calendar. This is the group that the communists overthrew and they retreated to Taiwan in 1949/50. The communists never changed back... so the Chinese calendar is only used for traditional chinese events (like the chinese new year).

This is part of the period in china known as the Century of Humiliation (1839-1949)... which includes the invasions of western powers, opium wars, etc.

It would be logistically easier to keep the same calendar and ban the idea that it's based on Jesus Christ.

Historians everywhere have kind of already done that by replacing the Dionysian era system with the Current Era notation system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era

Reply on news.ycombinator.com