The Nationalist government, officially the National Government of the Republic of China (), also known as Second Republic of China but most commonly known simply as the Republic of China, refers to the government of the
Republic of China between 1 July 1925 and 20 May 1948, led by the
Kuomintang (KMT, literally "Nationals' Party"). The name derives from the Kuomintang's translated name "Nationalist Party".
After the outbreak of the
Xinhai Revolution on 10 October 1911, revolutionary leader
Sun Yat-sen was elected Provisional President and founded the
Provisional Government of the Republic of China. To preserve national unity, Sun ceded the presidency to military strongman
Yuan Shikai, who established the
Beiyang government. After a
failed attempt to install himself as
Emperor of China, Yuan died in 1916, leaving a power vacuum which resulted in China being divided into several
warlord fiefdoms and rival governments. They were nominally
reunified in 1928 by the
Nanjing-based government led by Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek, which after the
Northern Expedition governed the country as a
one-party state under the
Kuomintang, and was subsequently given
international recognition as the legitimate representative of China. The Nationalist government would then experience many challenges such as the
Second Sino-Japanese War, the
Chinese Civil War and
World War II. The government was in place until it was
replaced by the current
Government of the Republic of China in the newly promulgated
Constitution of the Republic of China of 1948.
History
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 over two thousand years of
imperial rule in China. Central authority waxed and waned in response to
warlordism (1915–28),
Japanese invasion (1937–45), and the
Chinese Civil War (1927–49), with central authority strongest during the
Nanjing Decade (1927–37), when most of China came under the control of the
Kuomintang (KMT) under an
authoritarian one-party state.
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
Communist Party of China 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 communists. With the promulgation of the constitution, the Nationalist Government abolished itself and was replaced by the
Government of the Republic of China. Following their loss of the Civil War, the Nationalist Government retreated moved their capital to
Taipei while claiming that they were the legitimate government of the mainland.
Founding
After Sun's death on , four months later on , the National Government of the
Republic of China was established in
Guangzhou.
The following year,
Chiang Kai-shek became the ''
de facto'' leader of the
Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party. Chiang led the
Northern Expedition through China with the intention of defeating the
warlords and unifying the country. Chiang received the help of the
Soviet Union and the
Chinese Communist Party; however, he soon dismissed his Soviet advisors. He was convinced, not without reason, that they wanted to get rid of the KMT and take over.
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 the Communist Party fielded superior numbers and were massacring Nationalist supporters. These events eventually led to the
Chinese Civil War between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party. Chiang Kai-shek pushed the Communist Party 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 communists, 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 "political tutelage" which was a provisional government led by the KMT to educate people about their political and civil rights, and the third stage was the constitutional government. By 1928, the Nationalists, having taken over power militarily and reunified China, started the second phase, promulgating a provisional constitution and beginning the period of so-called "tutelage". The KMT was criticized for instituting
authoritarianism, but claimed it was attempting to establish a modern democratic society.
Among other institutions, they created at that time the
Academia Sinica, the
Central Bank of China, and other agencies. In 1932, China sent a team for the first time to the
Olympic Games. Historians, such as Edmund Fung, argue that establishing a democracy in China at that time was not possible. The nation was at war and divided between Communists and Nationalists. Corruption within the government and lack of direction also prevented any significant reform from taking place. Chiang realized the lack of real work being done within his administration and 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." The Nationalist government wrote a draft
constitution on 5 May 1936. Mass killing under the nationalists were common with millions of people killed. Notable mass killings include deaths from forced army conscription and the
White Terror.

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 government of the Republic of China 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
After the defeat of
Japan during
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 10–31 January 1946. Representatives of the Kuomintang, Communist Party of China,
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 Communists and promulgated the
Constitution of the Republic of China. The constitution was criticized by the Communists, 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 , promulgated by the National Government on , and went into effect on . 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 , after the Government of the Republic of China was established with the presidential inauguration of Chiang. The Communists, 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; however, existing parties continued to operate and new ones formed. After the end of the Second World War, and particularly after the passage of the constitution in 1946, the National Government was reconstituted to include multiple parties, in preparation for a full democratic government to come.
In February 1928, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 2nd Kuomintang National Congress held in Nanjing passed the Reorganization of the National Government Act. This act stipulated the national government was to be directed and regulated under the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, with the Committee of the Nationalist Government being elected by KMT Central Committee. Under the national government was seven ministries – Interior, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Transport, Justice, Agriculture and Mines, and Commerce. There were also additional institutions such as the Supreme Court, Control Yuan, and the General Academy.
With the promulgation of the Organic Law of the National Government in October 1928, the government was reorganized into five different branches or Yuan, namely the
Executive Yuan,
Legislative Yuan,
Judicial Yuan,
Examination Yuan as well as the
Control Yuan. The Chairman of the National Government was to be the head-of-state and commander-in-chief of the
National Revolutionary Army. Chiang Kai-shek was appointed as the first
Chairman of the National Government, a position he would retain until 1931. The Organic Law also stipulated that the Kuomintang, through its National Congress and Central Executive Committee, would exercise sovereign power during the period of political tutelage, and the KMT's Political Council would guide and superintend the National Government in the execution of important national affairs and that the council has the power to interpret or amend the organic law.
Human Rights violations

The Nationalist government of China has been accused of mass killings, as
Rudolph Rummel estimates the Nationalist government of China is responsible for between 6 and 18.5 million deaths. He attributes this death toll to a few major causes for example:
* 1 million Chinese civilians starved or
killed in order to fend off communist advance
* Hundreds of thousands of peasants and communists
killed in political repression.
* 1.75 to 2.5 million
Chinese starving to death due to grain being confiscated and sold to other peasants for the profit of Nationalist Government officials.
* 4.2 million Chinese perishing before entering combat due to starving to death or dying from the disease
during conscription campaigns.
* 440,000 to 893,000 Chinese civilians perishing in a
man-made flood by the Nationalists to stop a Japanese advance.
Military

The National Revolutionary Army (NRA) (), pre-1928 sometimes shortened to or Revolutionary Army and between 1928 and 1947 as or National Army was the Military Arm of the
Kuomintang (KMT) from 1925 until 1947, as well as the
national army of the
Republic of China during the KMT's period of
party rule beginning in 1928.
Originally organized 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, in the
Second Sino-Japanese War against the
Imperial Japanese Army, and in the
Chinese Civil War against the
People's Liberation Army.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the armed forces of the
Communist Party of China were nominally incorporated into the National Revolutionary Army (while retaining separate commands), but broke away to form the People's Liberation Army shortly after the end of the war. 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 has 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.
The military was formed through bloody and inhumane forced conscription campaigns; these campaigns are described by
Rudolph Rummel as thus:
"''Then there was the process of conscription. This was a deadly affair in which men were kidnapped for the army, rounded up indiscriminately by press-gangs or army units among those on the roads or in the towns and villages, or otherwise gathered together. Many men, some the very young and old, were killed resisting or trying to escape. Once collected, they would be roped or chained together and marched, with little food or water, long distances to camp. They often died or were killed along the way, sometimes less than 50 percent reaching camp alive. Then recruit camp was no better, with hospitals resembling Nazi concentration camps like Buchenwald. Probably 3,081,000 died during the Sino-Japanese War; likely another 1,131,000 during the Civil War – 4,212,000 dead in total. Just during conscription.''"
Economy

After the Kuomintang reunified the country in 1928, China entered a period of relative prosperity despite civil war and Japanese aggression. In 1937, the
Japanese invaded and laid China to waste in eight years of war. The era also saw additional
boycott of Japanese products.
Chinese industries continued to develop in the 1930s with the advent of the
Nanjing decade in the 1930s when Chiang Kai-shek unified most of the country and brought political stability. China's industries developed and grew from 1927 to 1931. Though badly hit by the
Great Depression from 1931 to 1935 and
Japan's occupation of Manchuria in 1931, industrial output recovered by 1936. By 1936, industrial output had recovered and surpassed its previous peak in 1931 prior to the Great Depression's effects on China. This is best shown by the trends in Chinese
GDP. In 1932, China's GDP peaked at
$28.8 billion, before falling to $21.3 billion by 1934 and recovering to $23.7 billion by 1935. By 1930,
foreign investment in China totaled $3.5 billion, with Japan leading ($1.4 billion) and the United Kingdom at 1 billion. By 1948, however, the capital stock had halted with investment dropping to only $3 billion, with the US and Britain leading.
However, the rural economy was hit hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s, in which an
overproduction of agricultural goods lead to massive falling prices for China as well as an increase in foreign imports (as agricultural goods produced in western countries were "dumped" in China). In 1931, imports of rice in China amounted to 21 million
bushels compared with 12 million in 1928. Other goods saw even more staggering increases. In 1932, 15 million bushels of grain were imported compared with 900,000 in 1928. This increased competition leads to a massive decline in Chinese agricultural prices (which were cheaper) and thus the income of rural farmers. In 1932, agricultural prices were 41 percent of 1921 levels.
[Sun Jian, p. 1089.] Rural incomes had fallen to 57 percent of 1931 levels by 1934 in some areas.
In 1937, Japan invaded China and the resulting warfare laid waste to China. Most of the prosperous east China coast was occupied by the Japanese, who carried out various atrocities such as the
Rape of Nanjing in 1937 and random massacres of whole villages. In one anti-guerrilla sweep in 1942, the Japanese killed up to 200,000 civilians in a month. The war was estimated to have killed between 20 and 25 million Chinese and destroyed all that Chiang had built up in the preceding decade. Development of industries was severely hampered after the war by devastating conflict as well as the inflow of cheap American goods. By 1946, Chinese industries operated at 20 percent capacity and had 25 percent of the output of pre-war China.
One effect of the war was a massive increase in government control of industries. In 1936, government-owned industries were only 15% of GDP. However, the ROC government took control of many industries in order to fight the war. In 1938, the ROC established a commission for industries and mines to control and supervise firms, as well as instilling price controls. By 1942, 70 percent of the capital of Chinese industry was owned by the government.
Following the war with Japan, Chiang acquired Taiwan from Japan and renewed his struggle with the
Communists. However, the corruption of the KMT, as well as
hyperinflation as a result of trying to fight the civil war, resulted in mass unrest throughout the Republic and sympathy for the communists. In addition, the Communists' promise to
redistribute land gained them support among the massive rural population. In 1949, the People's Liberation captured Beijing and later Nanjing as well. The People's Republic of China was proclaimed in
Beijing on . The Republic of China central government relocated to
Taipei in , to Taiwan where Japan had
laid an educational groundwork.
Former sites
Almost all of the former sites of the nationalist government are headquartered in the city of Nanking, the capital at the time, with only one exception.
When the city of Nanking was not captured by the Nationalist Government, they chose the following buildings as their headquarters.
See also
Government of the Republic of China
*
Kuomintang
*
Republic of China (1912–1949)
**
Beiyang government (1912–1928)
**
Communist-controlled China (1927–1949)
*
Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)
*
Diplomatic history of World War II
*
Nanjing Decade
References
Citations
Sources
* Bergere, Marie-Claire. ''Sun Yat-Sen'' (1998), 480 pages, the standard biography
* Boorman, Howard L., ed. ''Biographical Dictionary of Republican China.'' (Vol. I-IV and Index. 1967–1979). 600 short scholarly biographie
excerpt and text search** Boorman, Howard L. "Sun Yat-sen" in Boorman, ed. ''Biographical Dictionary of Republican China'' (1970) 3: 170–89
complete text online* Dreyer, Edward L. ''China at War, 1901–1949.'' (1995). 422 pp.
* Eastman Lloyd. ''Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937– 1945.'' (1984)
* Eastman Lloyd et al. ''The Nationalist Era in China, 1927–1949'' (1991)
* Fairbank, John K., ed. ''The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 12, Republican China 1912–1949. Part 1.'' (1983). 1001 pp.
* Fairbank, John K. and Feuerwerker, Albert, eds. ''The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China, 1912–1949, Part 2.'' (1986). 1092 pp.
* Fogel, Joshua A. ''The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography'' (2000)
* Gordon, David M. "The China-Japan War, 1931–1945," ''The Journal of Military History'' v70#1 (2006) 137–182; major historiographical overview of all important books and interpretations
* Hsiung, James C. and Steven I. Levine, eds. ''China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937–1945'' (1992), essays by scholars
online from Questia
* Hsi-sheng, Ch'i. ''Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937–1945'' (1982)
* Hung, Chang-tai. ''War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945'' (1994
complete text online free* Lara, Diana. ''The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937–1945'' (2010)
* Rubinstein, Murray A., ed. ''Taiwan: A New History'' (2006), 560pp
* Shiroyama, Tomoko. ''China during the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy, 1929–1937'' (2008)
* Shuyun, Sun. ''The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth'' (2007)
* Taylor, Jay. ''The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China.'' (2009)
* Westad, Odd Arne. ''Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950.'' (2003). 413 pages.
External links
*
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