Editing Gonghe Regency (section)

===Historiographical significance===
{{main article|Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project}}
The first year of the Gonghe Regency, 841 BC, is highly significant in ancient Chinese history, in that Sima Qian was able to construct a year-by-year chronology back to that point, but he and subsequent historians were unable to confidently date any earlier events in Chinese history. Sima himself found the information about earlier dates in his sources to be unreliable and contradictory and so chose not to adopt them in his work. The government of the [[China|People's Republic of China]] sponsored the [[Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project]], a multidisciplinary project that sought to give better estimates for dates prior to 841 BC, but the project's draft report, published in 2000, [[Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project#Reception|has been criticized]] by various scholars.

When encountering the Western term "[[republic]]", the [[Japanese language|Japanese]] drew parallels with the Gonghe Regency of [[Chinese history]], and began using the term {{lang|ja|共和国}} ({{translit|ja|kyouwakoku}}, literally "shared harmony country", analogous to "[[commonwealth]]") to describe such non-monarchical systems. This [[semantic shift]] would later be [[Reborrowing|reborrowed]] into [[Chinese language|Chinese]]. It is worth noting however, that the term 民國 ("popular state", literally "people country", read as {{translit|cmn|mínguó}}, {{translit|ja|minkoku}} and {{translit|ko|min'guk}} in [[Standard Chinese|Chinese]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]] and [[Hanja|Korean]] respectively) is used when referring to the [[Republic of China]] and [[Republic of Korea|Korea]] (but not the [[People's Republic of China]] or the [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea]], which use the regular word for "republic").