A republic was formally established on 1 January 1912 following the
Xinhai Revolution, which itself began with the
Wuchang uprising on 10 October 1911, successfully overthrowing the
Qing dynasty and ending over two thousand years of
imperial rule in China. Neither the Nanjing government nor the earlier
Beiyang government succeeded in consolidating governance in rural China. Meanwhile, the CCP took over all of mainland China and founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing.
1912–1916: Founding (
left) and
Sun Yat-sen (
right) with flags representing the early republic In 1912, after over two thousand years of dynastic rule, a republic was established to replace the
monarchy. The
Qing dynasty that preceded the republic had experienced instability throughout the 19th century and suffered from both internal rebellion and foreign imperialism. A program of institutional reform proved too little and too late. Only the lack of an alternative regime prolonged the monarchy's existence until 1912. The Chinese Republic grew out of the
Wuchang Uprising against the Qing government, on 10 October 1911, which is now celebrated annually as the ROC's
national day, also known as "
Double Ten Day". Sun Yat-sen had been actively promoting revolution from his bases in exile. He then returned from the United States to China and on 29 December, Sun Yat-sen was elected as the provisional president by the revolutionists' assembly in Nanjing, which consisted of representatives from seventeen provinces. On 1 January 1912, he was formally inaugurated and pledged "to overthrow the despotic government led by the Manchu, consolidate the Republic of China and plan for the welfare of the people". Sun's new government lacked military strength. As a compromise, he negotiated with
Yuan Shikai the commander of the
Beiyang Army, promising Yuan the presidency of the republic if he were to remove the Qing emperor by force. Yuan agreed to the deal. On 12 February 1912, regent
Empress Dowager Longyu signed the
abdication decree on behalf of Puyi, ending several millennia of monarchical rule. In December 1912 to February 1913
elections were held nation-wide for each provincial assemblies, which chose their legal delegates for the first
National Assembly of the republic. The
Kuomintang emerged as the formal political party that replaced the revolutionary organization
Tongmenghui, and at these elections it won the largest share of seats in both houses of the National Assembly and in some provincial assemblies.
Song Jiaoren led the Kuomintang Party to electoral victories by fashioning his party's program to appeal to the gentry, landowners, and merchants. But Song was assassinated on 20 March 1913, at the behest of Yuan Shikai. Yuan was elected the first formal president of the ROC in 1913. He ruled by military power and ignored the republican institutions established by his predecessor, threatening to execute Senate members who disagreed with his decisions. After the
failed 1913 revolt by the governors of several southern Chinese provinces and supporters of Kuomintang, he dissolved Kuomintang, banned "secret organizations" (which implicitly included the KMT), and ignored the provisional constitution. Ultimately, Yuan declared himself
Emperor of China in 1915. The new ruler of China tried to increase centralization by abolishing the provincial system; however, this move angered the gentry along with the provincial governors, who were usually military men.
1916–1927: Warlord Era Yuan's changes to government caused many provinces to
declare independence and become
warlord states. Increasingly unpopular and deserted by his supporters, Yuan abdicated in 1916 and died of natural causes shortly thereafter. China then declined into a period of warlordism. Sun, having been forced into exile, returned to
Guangdong in the south in 1917 and 1922, with the help of warlords, and set up successive rival governments to the
Beiyang government in Beijing, having re-established the KMT in October 1919. Sun's dream was to unify China by launching an expedition against the north. However, he lacked the military support and funding to turn it into a reality. Meanwhile, the Beiyang government struggled to hold onto power, and an open and wide-ranging debate evolved regarding how China should confront the West. In 1919, a student protest against the government's weak response to the
Treaty of Versailles, considered unfair by Chinese intellectuals, led to the
May Fourth movement, whose demonstrations were against the danger of spreading Western influence replacing Chinese culture. It was in this intellectual climate that
Marxist thought began to spread. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921 and a nominal
KMT–CCP Alliance was soon formed to reunite China. CCP members joined the KMT and the two parties cooperated to build a revolutionary base in Guangzhou, though rifts became apparent quickly. After Sun's death in March 1925,
Chiang Kai-shek became the leader of the
Kuomintang. In 1926, Chiang led the
Northern Expedition with the intention of defeating the Beiyang warlords and unifying the country. Chiang received the help of the
Soviet Union and the CCP. However, he soon dismissed his Soviet advisers, being convinced that they wanted to get rid of the KMT and take control. Chiang decided to purge the Communists,
massacring thousands in Shanghai. At the same time, other violent conflicts were taking place in China: in the South, where the CCP had superior numbers, Nationalist supporters were being massacred.
1927–1937: Nanjing decade during the "Nanjing Decade" Chiang Kai-shek pushed the CCP into the interior and established a government, with Nanjing as its capital, in 1927. By 1928, Chiang's army overthrew the
Beiyang government and unified the entire nation, at least nominally, beginning the
Nanjing decade. Sun Yat-sen envisioned three phases for the KMT rebuilding of Chinamilitary rule and violent reunification; ; and finally a constitutional democracy. In 1930, after seizing power and reunifying China by force, the "tutelage" phase started with the promulgation of a provisional constitution. In an attempt to distance themselves from the Soviets, the Chinese government sought
assistance from Germany. According to Lloyd Eastman, Chiang Kai-shek was influenced by European fascist movements, and he launched the
Blue Shirts Society and the
New Life Movement in imitation of them, in an effort to counter the growth of Mao's communism as well as resist both Western and Japanese imperialism. According to
Stanley Payne, however, Chiang's KMT was "normally classified as a multi-class populist or 'nation-building' party but not a fitting candidate for fascism (except by old-line Communists)." He also stated that, "Lloyd Eastman has called the Blue Shirts, whose members admired European fascism and were influenced by it, a Chinese fascist organization. This is probably an exaggeration. The Blue Shirts certainly exhibited some of the characteristics of fascism, as did many nationalist organizations around the world, but it is not clear that the group possessed the full qualities of an intrinsic fascist movement....The Blue Shirts probably had some affinity with and for fascism, a common feature of nationalisms in crisis during the 1930s, but it is doubtful that they represented any clear-cut Asian variant of fascism." Still other historians have noted that Chiang and the KMT's exact ideology itself was very complex and oscillated over time, with different factions of his government cooperating with both the Soviets and Germans as they saw fit, and that Chiang eventually became disillusioned with the Blue Shirts, which officially disbanded by 1938, something Payne also mentions as "possibly because of competition with the KMT itself." Some have also noted that in contrast to older historians from decades ago, Chiang's efforts have been increasingly seen by newer Western and Chinese historians alike as an arguably necessary if austere part of the complicated nation-building process in China during his time, especially given the wide range of both domestic and foreign challenges it faced on many different concurrent fronts. Several major government institutions were founded during this period, including the
Academia Sinica and the
Central Bank of China. In 1932, China sent its first team to the
Olympic Games. Campaigns were mounted and laws passed to promote the rights of women. In the 1931 Civil Code, women were given equal inheritance rights, banned forced marriage and gave women the right to control their own money and initiate divorce. No nationally unified women's movement could organize until China was unified under the Kuomintang Government in Nanjing in 1928; women's suffrage was finally included in the new Constitution of 1936, although the constitution was not implemented until 1947. Addressing social problems, especially in remote villages, was aided by improved communications. The
Rural Reconstruction Movement was one of many that took advantage of the new freedom to raise social consciousness. The Nationalist government published a draft constitution on 5 May 1936. Continual wars plagued the government. Those in the western border regions included the
Kumul Rebellion, the
Sino-Tibetan War, and the
Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. Large areas of
China proper remained under the semi-autonomous rule of local warlords such as
Feng Yuxiang and
Yan Xishan, provincial military leaders, or warlord coalitions.
1937–1945: Second Sino-Japanese War Few Chinese had any illusions about Japanese desires on China. Hungry for raw materials and pressed by a growing population, Japan initiated
the seizure of Manchuria in September 1931, and established the former emperor
Puyi as head of the puppet state of
Manchukuo in 1932. The loss of Manchuria, and its potential for industrial development and war industries, was a blow to the Kuomintang economy. The
League of Nations, established at the end of World War I, was unable to act in the face of Japanese defiance. The Japanese began to push south of the
Great Wall into northern China and the coastal provinces. Chinese fury against Japan was predictable, but anger was also directed against Chiang and the Nanjing government, which at the time was more preoccupied with anti-Communist extermination campaigns than with resisting the Japanese invaders. The importance of "internal unity before external danger" was forcefully brought home in December 1936, when
Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by
Zhang Xueliang and forced to ally with the Communists against the Japanese in the
Second United Front, an event now known as the
Xi'an Incident. Chinese resistance stiffened after 7 July 1937, when a clash occurred between Chinese and Japanese troops outside
Beijing near the
Marco Polo Bridge. This skirmish led to open, although undeclared, warfare between China and Japan. Shanghai fell after a
three-month battle during which Japan suffered extensive casualties in both its army and navy. Nanjing fell in December 1937, which was followed by mass murders and rapes known as the
Nanjing Massacre. The national capital was briefly at
Wuhan, then removed in an epic retreat to Chongqing, the seat of government until 1945. In 1940, the Japanese set up the collaborationist
Wang Jingwei regime, with its capital in Nanjing, which proclaimed itself the legitimate "Republic of China" in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek's government, although its claims were significantly hampered due to its being a
puppet state controlling limited amounts of territory. soldiers during the
1938 Yellow River flood The United Front between the Kuomintang and the CCP had salutary effects for the beleaguered CCP, despite Japan's steady territorial gains in northern China, the coastal regions and the rich
Yangtze River valley in central China. After 1940, conflicts between the Kuomintang and Communists became more frequent in the
areas not under Japanese control. The Communists expanded their influence wherever opportunities presented themselves through mass organizations, administrative reforms and the land- and tax-reform measures favoring the peasants and, the spread of their organizational network, while the Kuomintang attempted to neutralize the spread of Communist influence. Meanwhile, northern China was infiltrated politically by Japanese politicians in Manchukuo using facilities such as the
Manchukuo Imperial Palace. After its entry into the
Pacific War during World War II, the United States became increasingly involved in Chinese affairs. As an ally, it embarked in late 1941 on a program of massive military and financial aid to the hard-pressed
Nationalist Government. In January 1943, both the United States and the United Kingdom led the way in revising their
unequal treaties with China from the past. Within a few months a new agreement was signed between the United States and the Republic of China for the stationing of American troops in China as part of the common war effort against Japan. The United States sought unsuccessfully to reconcile the rival Kuomintang and Communists, to make for a more effective anti-Japanese war effort. In December 1943, the
Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1880s, and subsequent laws, enacted by the United States Congress to restrict Chinese immigration into the United States were repealed. The wartime policy of the United States was meant to help China become a strong ally and a stabilizing force in postwar East Asia. During the war, China was one of the Big Four Allies, and later one of the
Four Policemen, which was a precursor to China having a permanent seat on the
United Nations Security Council. In August 1945, with American help, Nationalist troops moved to take the Japanese surrender in North China. The Soviet Union—encouraged to
invade Manchuria to hasten the end of the war and allowed a Soviet sphere of influence there as agreed to at the
Yalta Conference in February 1945—dismantled and removed more than half the industrial equipment left there by the Japanese. Although the Chinese had not been present at Yalta, they had been consulted and had agreed to have the Soviets enter the war, in the belief that the Soviet Union would deal only with the Kuomintang government. However, the Soviet presence in northeast China enabled the Communists to arm themselves with equipment surrendered by the withdrawing Japanese army.
1945–1949: Defeat in the Chinese Civil War In 1945, after the end of the war, the Nationalist Government moved back to Nanjing. The Republic of China emerged from the war nominally a great military power but actually a nation economically prostrate and on the verge of all-out civil war. The problems of rehabilitating the formerly Japanese-occupied areas and of reconstructing the nation from the ravages of a protracted war were staggering. The economy deteriorated, sapped by the military demands of foreign war and internal strife, by spiraling inflation, and by Nationalist profiteering, speculation, and hoarding. Starvation came in the wake of the war, and millions were rendered homeless by floods and unsettled conditions in many parts of the country. On 25 October 1945, following the
surrender of Japan, the administration of
Taiwan and
Penghu Islands were
handed over from Japan to China. After the end of the war,
United States Marines were used to hold Beijing and
Tianjin against a possible Soviet incursion, and logistic support was given to Kuomintang forces in north and northeast China. To further this end, on 30 September 1945 the
1st Marine Division, charged with maintaining security in the areas of the
Shandong Peninsula and the eastern
Hebei, arrived in China. In January 1946, through the mediation of the United States, a military truce between the Kuomintang and the Communists was arranged, but battles soon resumed. Public opinion of the administrative incompetence of the Nationalist government was incited by the Communists during the nationwide student protest against the mishandling of the
Shen Chong rape case in early 1947 and during another national protest against monetary reforms later that year. The United States—realizing that no American efforts short of large-scale armed intervention could stop the coming war—withdrew Gen.
George Marshall's American mission. Thereafter, the Chinese Civil War became more widespread; battles raged not only for territories but also for the allegiance of sections of the population. The United States aided the Nationalists with massive economic loans and weapons but no combat support. ,
Chengdu, and
Xichang before arriving in Taipei. Belatedly, the Republic of China government sought to enlist popular support through internal reforms. However, the effort was in vain, because of rampant government corruption and the accompanying political and economic chaos. By late 1948 the Kuomintang position was bleak. The demoralized and undisciplined
National Revolutionary Army proved to be no match for the Communists' motivated and disciplined
People's Liberation Army. The Communists were well established in the north and northeast. Although the Kuomintang had an advantage in numbers of men and weapons, controlled a much larger territory and population than their adversaries, and enjoyed considerable international support, they were exhausted by the long war with Japan and in-fighting among various generals. They were also losing the propaganda war to the Communists, with a population weary of Kuomintang corruption and yearning for peace. In January 1949, Beiping was taken by the Communists without a fight, and its name changed back to Beijing. Following the capture of Nanjing on 23 April, major cities passed from Kuomintang to Communist control with minimal resistance, through November. In most cases the surrounding countryside and small towns had come under Communist influence long before the cities. Finally, on 1 October 1949, Communists led by
Mao Zedong founded the
People's Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek declared
martial law in May 1949, whilst a few hundred thousand Nationalist troops and two million refugees, predominantly from the government and business community, fled from mainland China to Taiwan. There remained in China itself only isolated pockets of resistance. On 7 December 1949, Chiang proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China. During the Chinese Civil War both the Nationalists and Communists carried out mass atrocities, with millions of non-combatants killed by both sides. Benjamin Valentino has estimated atrocities in the civil war resulted in the death of between 1.8 million and 3.5 million people between 1927 and 1949, including deaths from forced conscription and massacres. ==Politics==