The Constitution of the Republic of China is the fundamental law of the Republic of China (ROC), which since 1949 only controls the free area of the Republic of China, which is the island of Taiwan and minor outlying islands, the territories not lost to the Chinese Communists. It was adopted by the National Constituent Assembly on 25 December 1946, and went into effect on 25 December 1947, at a time when the ROC still had nominal control of Mainland China and to which this constitution applied. This made China (with approx. 450 million people at that time) the most populous "paper democracy" in the world. The latest revision to the constitution was in 2004.