Nationalist government

The oldest surviving republic in East Asia, the Republic of China was formally established on 1January 1912 in mainland China following the Xinhai Revolution, which itself began with the Wuchang Uprising on 10October 1911, replacing the Qing dynasty and ending nearly three thousand years of imperial rule in China. Central authority waxed and waned in response to warlordism (1915–1928), Japanese invasion (1937–1945), and the Chinese Civil War (1927–1949), with central authority strongest during the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937), when most of China came under the control of the Kuomintang (KMT) under an authoritarian one-party state. Despite his varying formal positions in the party, government and the army, the ultimate authority was held by Chiang Kai-shek At the end of World War II in 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered control of Taiwan and its island groups to the Allies, and Taiwan was placed under the Republic of China's administrative control. The legitimacy of this transfer is disputed and is another aspect of the disputed political status of Taiwan. After World War II, the civil war between the ruling Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) resumed, despite attempts at mediation by the United States. The Nationalist government began drafting the Constitution of the Republic of China under a National Assembly, but was boycotted by the CCP. With the promulgation of the constitution, the Nationalist government was reorganized into the Government of the Republic of China. Founding After Sun's death on 12 March 1925, four months later on 1 July 1925, the Nationalist government was established in Guangzhou. The following year, as Generalissimo of the National Revolutionary Army, Chiang Kai-shek became the de facto leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party. He especially headed the right wing of the Nationalist Party, while the Communists formed part of the Party's left-wing. Chiang led the Northern Expedition through China with the intention of defeating the warlords and unifying the country. The National Revolutionary Army received significant aid from the Soviet Union; Chiang himself was surrounded by Soviet military advisors. Much of the Nationalist Party, however, became convinced, not without reason, that the Communists, under recent orders from the Comintern, wanted to break from the United Front and get rid of the KMT. Chiang decided to strike first and purged the Communists, killing thousands of them. At the same time, other violent conflicts took place in the south of China where peasant associations supported by the CCP were attacking landlords and local gentry, who formed a base of political support for the KMT right-wing and recruitment for Nationalist soldiers. These events eventually led to the Chinese Civil War between the Nationalist Party and the CCP. Chiang Kai-shek pushed the CCP into the interior as he sought to destroy them, and moved the Nationalist government to Nanjing in 1927. Leftists within the KMT still allied to the CCP, led by Wang Jingwei, had established a rival Nationalist Government in Wuhan two months earlier, but soon joined Chiang in Nanjing in August 1927. By the following year, Chiang's army had captured Beijing after overthrowing the Beiyang government and unified the entire nation, at least nominally, marking the beginning the Nanjing decade. Nanjing decade and war with Japan According to Sun Yat-sen's "Three Stages of Revolution" theory, the KMT was to rebuild China in three phases: the first stage was military unification, which was carried out with the Northern Expedition; the second was which was a provisional government led by the KMT to educate people about their political and civil rights, and the third stage would be constitutional government. By 1928, the Nationalists claimed that they had succeeded in reunifying China and were beginning the second stage, the period of so-called "tutelage". In 1929, the KMT first attempted to start the ending of the unequal treaties and regain the extraterritoriality. In 1931, they promulgated a provisional constitution that established the one-party rule of the KMT and promised eventual democratization. In practice, this meant that Chiang Kai-Shek was able to continue authoritarian rule. Even had it been the KMT's intention, historians such as Edmund Fung argue that they may not have been able to establish a democracy under the circumstances of the time. Despite nominal reunification, the Chiang's Nationalist Government relied heavily on the support of warlords such as Ma Hushan, Yan Xishan, and Zhang Xueliang to exert control on the provinces. The loyalty of these figures was often highly suspect, and they frequently engaged in acts of open defiance, as in the Xi'an Incident of 1936, or even rebellion. In alliance with local landlords and other power-brokers, they blocked moderate land reforms that might have benefits the rural poor. Instead, the poor peasants remained a consistent source of recruits for the Communist Party. While weakened by frequent massacres and purges—historian Rudolph Rummel estimated that 1,654,000 people were killed by the KMT in anti-Communist purges during this period—the Communists were able to survive and posed a major latent threat to the regime. However, perhaps the biggest challenges came from within the administration itself. As Chiang Kai-Shek told the state council: "Our organization becomes worse and worse ... many staff members just sit at their desks and gaze into space, others read newspapers and still others sleep." Corruption was endemic at all levels of government. The tension between Chiang's centralizing tendencies and the warlords who supported him led to friction and inconsistent direction. Even the KMT itself was disunified, with the pro-Chiang factions of the CC Clique, Political Study Clique, and fascist-inspired Blue Shirts Society opposed by a left-wing faction under Wang Jingwei and a right-wing faction influenced by Hu Hanmin. To control the opposing KMT factions, Chiang relied increasingly on the National Revolutionary Army. However, periodic famines continued: in Northern China from 1928 to 1930, in Sichuan from 1936 to 1937, and in Henan from 1942 to 1943. In total, these famines cost at least 11.7 million lives. GDP growth averaged 3.9 per cent a year from 1929 to 1941 and per capita GDP about 1.8 per cent. Among other institutions, the Nationalist government founded the Academia Sinica and the Central Bank of China. In 1932, China for the first time sent teams to the Olympic Games. against Japan by the Chongqing Nationalist government on 9 December 1941 The Nationalists faced a new challenge with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, with hostilities continuing through the Second Sino-Japanese War, part of World War II, from 1937 to 1945. The Nationalists retreated from Nanjing to Chongqing. In 1945, after the war of eight years, Japan surrendered and the Republic of China, under the name "China", became one of the founding members of the United Nations. The government returned to Nanjing in 1946. Post–World War II Following the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II, Taiwan was surrendered to the Allies, with ROC troops accepting the surrender of the Japanese garrison. The government of the ROC proclaimed the "retrocession" of Taiwan to the Republic of China and established a provincial government on the island. The military administration of the ROC extended over Taiwan, which led to widespread unrest and increasing tensions between local Taiwanese and mainlanders. The shooting of a civilian on 28 February 1947 triggered an island-wide unrest, which was brutally suppressed with military force in what is now known as the February 28 Incident. Mainstream estimates of casualties range from 18,000 to 30,000, mainly Taiwanese elites. The 28 February Incident has had far-reaching effects on subsequent Taiwanese history. From 1945 to 1947, under United States mediation, especially through the Marshall Mission, the Nationalists and Communists agreed to start a series of peace talks aiming at establishing a coalition government. The two parties agreed to open multiparty talks on post-World War II political reforms via a Political Consultative Conference. This was included in the Double Tenth Agreement. This agreement was implemented by the Nationalist Government, who organized the first Political Consultative Assembly from 10 to 31 January 1946. Representatives of the Kuomintang, CCP, Chinese Youth Party, and China Democratic League, as well as independent delegates, attended the conference in Chongqing. However, shortly afterward, the two parties failed to reach an agreement and the civil war resumed. In the context of political and military animosity, the National Assembly was summoned by the Nationalists without the participation of the CCP and promulgated the Constitution of the Republic of China. The constitution was criticized by the CCP, and led to the final break between the two sides. The full-scale civil war resumed from early 1947. After the National Assembly election, the drafted Constitution was adopted by the National Assembly on 25 December 1946, promulgated by the National Government on 1 January 1947, and went into effect on 25 December 1947. The Constitution was seen as the third and final stage of Kuomintang reconstruction of China. Chiang Kai-shek was also elected as the 1st President of the Republic of China under the constitution by the National Assembly in 1948, with Li Zongren being elected as vice-president. The Nationalist Government was abolished on 20 May 1948 and replaced with an government with the presidential inauguration of Chiang. The CCP, though invited to the convention that drafted it, boycotted and declared after the ratification that not only would it not recognize the ROC constitution, but all bills passed by the Nationalist administration would be disregarded as well. Zhou Enlai challenged the legitimacy of the National Assembly in 1947 by accusing the KMT of hand-picking the members of the National Assembly 10 years earlier; claiming they thus could not legitimately represent the Chinese people. == Government ==

The National Government governed under a dual-party state apparatus under the ideology of Dang Guo, effectively making it a one-party state where the ultimate power was wielded by the army and personally by Chiang Kai-shek regardless of his formal positions and the relations between the two chambers of parliament, the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan. Authority within the Nationalist government ultimately lay with Chiang Kai-shek. Former sites Almost all of the former sites of the Nationalist government are headquartered in the city of Nanjing, the capital at the time, with only one exception. When the city of Nanjing was not captured by the Nationalist government, they chose the following buildings as their headquarters. == Military ==

Republic of China Navy The Ministry of the Navy () was a military ministry-level agency established by the Nationalist government on April 12, 1929, which was independent and existed parallel with the Military Affairs Commission at the time of establishment. Therefore, unlike the air force, the navy of the Nationalist government was a fully independent service branch and was not part of the National Revolutionary Army. The primary mission of the Ministry of the Navy was to rebuild the Republic of China Navy and to promote the development of maritime power. By 1937, however, most of the naval forces under its command were nearly annihilated in the early naval battles of the Second Sino-Japanese War by the Imperial Japanese Navy. On January 1, 1938, with virtually no warships left under its control, the Ministry was dissolved and merged into the Navy Command Headquarters under the Military Affairs Commission of the Nationalist government. National Revolutionary Army The National Revolutionary Army (NRA; ), pre-1928 sometimes shortened to Revolutionary Army () and between 1928 and 1947 as National Army (), was the Military Arm of the Kuomintang (KMT) from 1925 until 1947, commanded by the Military Affairs Commission of the Nationalist government. Compared to the Republic of China Navy, the NRA was more distinctly party-owned, with tighter political control by the Kuomintang, whereas the Navy retained more characteristics of a state-operated and professionally autonomous force. Originally organised with Soviet aid as a means for the KMT to unify China against warlordism, the National Revolutionary Army fought major engagements in the Northern Expedition against the Chinese Beiyang Army warlords. Beginning in 1928, following the April 12 Incident and the KMT's split with the Communist factions, the NRA also launched a series of Encirclement Campaigns aimed at eradicating Communist base areas in the Chinese rural area. The NRA later fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War against the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy, and then, in the Chinese Civil War, against the People's Liberation Army. observation aircraft, flown by the Chinese Nationalist Air Force. The type of aircraft was used extensively during anti-communist campaigns prior to the 2nd Sino Japanese War The NRA included a largely independent aviation component which was known as the Air Force (), and western historians usually described the air arm as the Chinese Nationalist Air Force, additionally it had an independent Air Defense force which was not under the commanding structure of any of those "Land Force" units. Prior to the War, the NRA also had a Motor Torpedo Boat squadron, co existing with the Navy's torpedo flotilla, which is operated by the Submarine and Motor Torpedo Boat College, known as the S.M.C.. With the promulgation of the Constitution of the Republic of China in 1947 and the formal end of the KMT party-state, the National Revolutionary Army was renamed the Republic of China Armed Forces, with the bulk of its forces forming the Republic of China Army, which retreated to Taiwan in 1949. Miscellaneous forces and militias Local Security Forces, Warlord-affiliated troops, and Local Militias played a significant auxiliary role in the broader military structure of the Nationalist China, especially after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. While not part of the centralized, regular National Revolutionary Army (NRA), many of these units were nominally incorporated into the NRA system during wartime mobilisation, often retaining their own command structures, political loyalties, and local identities. • Local Security Forces () were provincial or county-level garrison forces originally organised for maintaining internal order, later drawn into frontline duties despite limited training and equipment. That said, in wealthier counties or around major cities, some of those Local Security Force Regiments were relatively well-funded and well-equipped, with training, pay, and even armament levels comparable to core NRA (Central Army) units. Their performance and discipline, in such cases, could approach regular army standards. • Warlord-affiliated troops (), typically former warlord troops integrated through political negotiation rather than military standardisation, were loosely affiliated with the NRA but often operated with minimal coordination or discipline. • The Local Militias () referred to grassroots self-defense militias, often hastily armed and locally raised, who provided rear-area security or guerrilla resistance. Although included under the broader NRA command on paper, these irregular forces were frequently marked by inconsistent combat effectiveness, poor logistical support, and divergent loyalties, complicating centralized command and control. Nonetheless, they constituted a substantial portion of the Chinese war effort, especially in regional defense and in supplementing the under-resourced central army. An important exception, among those Warlord-affiliated troops, however, was the troops of the Sichuan Clique, known as the Szechwan Troops () who earned a reputation for their tenacious combat performance, resilience under extreme conditions, and remarkable tolerance for heavy casualties. Due to their consistent battlefield contributions during the Second Sino-Japanese War, most Sichuan clique units were formally recognised as part of the National Revolutionary Army, rather than being treated as auxiliary or irregular forces. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the two armed corps of the Chinese Communist were nominally incorporated into the National Revolutionary Army (while retaining separate commands), as the Eighth Route Army () and the New Fourth Army () respectively. Both broke away to form the People's Liberation Army shortly after the end of the war. Forced conscription in WWII Forced conscription campaigns were conducted by the military. In many rural places, military forces employed press-gangs, kidnappings, and mass roundups to meet numerical quotas. In some extreme cases, less than half of conscripts survived to complete basic training. These harsh practices were especially prevalent among units not directly controlled by the central government, and among rapidly raised local militias and civil defense groups, and described by Rudolph Rummel as such: The Nationalist army increasingly turned to raiding villages to press-gang peasants into service and force marching them to assigned units. == See also ==