A report on Kuomintang, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek

Sun Yat-sen, the founder and its provisional president, served only briefly before handing over the presidency to Yuan Shikai, the leader of the Beiyang Army.

Sun's party, the Kuomintang (KMT), then led by Song Jiaoren, won the parliamentary election held in December 1912.

General Chiang Kai-shek, who became the Chairman of the Kuomintang after Sun's death and subsequent power struggle in 1925, began the Northern Expedition in 1926 to overthrow the Beiyang government.

The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China (ROC) and forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), lasting intermittently after 1927.

Following the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the 1911 Revolution, Sun Yat-sen assumed the presidency of the newly formed Republic of China, and was shortly thereafter succeeded by Yuan Shikai.

In 1923, Sun sent Chiang Kai-shek, one of his lieutenants, for several months of military and political study in Moscow.

The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT), also known as the "Chinese Nationalist Party", against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926.

The expedition was led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and was divided into two phases.

Before his death in March 1925, Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China and co-founder of the KMT, was supportive of Sino-Soviet co-operation, which had involved forming the First United Front with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

On 1 January 1912, the National Assembly declared the establishment of the Republic of China, with Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Tongmenghui (United League), as President of the Republic.

Many of these anarchists would later assume high positions in the Kuomintang (KMT).

Other units, led by Chiang Kai-shek and Yin Zhirei (尹銳志), captured most of the government offices.

Japan invaded China in 1937, starting the Second Sino-Japanese War and temporarily halting the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT).

On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president.

In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political maneuverings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition.

Nanjing served as the capital of Eastern Wu (229–280), one of the three major states in the Three Kingdoms period; the Eastern Jin and each of the Southern dynasties (Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen), which successively ruled southern China from 317 to 589; the Southern Tang (937–75), one of the Ten Kingdoms; the Ming dynasty when, for the first time, all of China was ruled from the city (1368–1421); and the Republic of China under the nationalist Kuomintang (1927–37, 1946–49) prior to its flight to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-Shek during the Chinese Civil War.

The Xinhai Revolution led to the founding of the Republic of China in January 1912 with Sun Yat-sen as the first provisional president and Nanjing was selected as its new capital.

The Nationalist Kuomintang government of Sun Yat-sen based in Guangzhou began to contest Yuan's Beiyang Government based in Beijing as the legitimate government of China.

The Warlord Era ended in 1928 when the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek officially unified China through the Northern Expedition, marking the beginning of the Nanjing decade.

Wuhan was briefly the capital of China in 1927 under the left wing of the Kuomintang (KMT) government.

On October 10, 1911, Sun Yat-sen's followers launched the Wuchang Uprising, which led to the collapse of the Qing state and 2,000 years of dynastic rule, as well as the establishment of the Republic of China.

The split was partially motivated by the purge of the Communists within the party, which marked the end of the First United Front, and Chiang Kai-shek briefly stepped down as the commander of the National Revolutionary Army.

Its legitimacy was seriously challenged in 1917, by Sun Yat-sen's Canton-based Kuomintang (KMT) government movement.

His successor Chiang Kai-shek defeated the Beiyang warlords during the Northern Expedition between 1926 and 1928, and overthrew the factions and the government, effectively unifying the country in 1928.

He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang, leading a government in Wuhan in opposition to the right-wing government in Nanjing, but later became increasingly anti-communist after his efforts to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party ended in political failure.

Wang was a close associate of Sun Yat-sen for the last twenty years of Sun's life.

After Sun's death in 1925 Wang engaged in a political struggle with Chiang Kai-shek for control over the Kuomintang, but lost.