A report on Second Sino-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek and Nanjing

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.

In 1927, Chiang moved the nationalist government to Nanking and purged the CCP, beginning with the Shanghai massacre.

Nation-building efforts yielded to fight the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 when a skirmish between the National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army culminated in a full-scale invasion by Japan.

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).

In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing.

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.

From 1926 to 1928, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek successfully led the Northern Expedition against regional warlords and unified the fragmented nation.

From 1937 to 1945, the KMT-ruled Nationalist government led China through the Second Sino-Japanese War against Japan.

The various government bodies previously in Nanjing, that were re-established in Taipei as the KMT-controlled government, actively claimed sovereignty over all China.

From 1937 to 1945, hostilities were mostly put on hold as the Second United Front fought the Japanese invasion of China with eventual help from the Allies of World War II, but even then co-operation between the KMT and CCP was minimal and armed clashes between them were common.

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

There were now three capitals in China: the internationally recognized republic capital in Beijing, the CCP and left-wing KMT at Wuhan and the right-wing KMT regime at Nanjing, which would remain the KMT capital for the next decade.

The region that it would administer was initially seized by Japan throughout the late 1930s with the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Wang, a rival of Chiang Kai-shek and member of the pro-peace faction of the KMT, defected to the Japanese side and formed a collaborationist government in occupied Nanking (Nanjing) (the traditional capital of China) in 1940.

Wuhan is a major city in the world by scientific research outputs and it ranks 14th globally and 5th in China (after Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou).

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.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War and following the fall of Nanking in December 1937, Wuhan had become the provisional capital of China's Kuomintang government, and became another focal point of pitched air battles beginning in early 1938 between modern monoplane bomber and fighter aircraft of the Imperial Japanese forces and the Chinese Air Force, which included support from the Soviet Volunteer Group in both planes and personnel, as U.S. support in war materials waned.As the battle raged on through 1938, Wuhan and the surrounding region had become the site of the Battle of Wuhan.

Japan's armed forces initially achieved large-scale military successes during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Pacific War.

Japan invaded China proper in 1937, beginning a war against a united front of Mao Zedong's communists and Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists.

On December 13 of that same year, the Nationalist capital of Nanjing surrendered to Japanese troops.

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.

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

Wang remained inside the Kuomintang, but continued to have disagreements with Chiang until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, after which he accepted an invitation from the Japanese Empire to form a Japanese-supported collaborationist government in Nanking.

The PLA can trace its origins during the republican era to the left-wing units of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) when they broke away on 1 August 1927 in an uprising against the nationalist government as the Chinese Red Army before being reintegrated into the NRA as units of New Fourth Army and Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The CCP founded their military wing on 1 August 1927 during the Nanchang uprising when Communist elements of the National Revolutionary Army rebelled under the leadership of Zhu De, He Long, Ye Jianying and Zhou Enlai and other leftist elements of the Kuomintang after the Shanghai massacre of 1927 by Chiang Kai-shek.

The PLA Institute of International Relations at Nanjing comes under the Second Department of the Joint Staff Department and is responsible for training military attachés, assistant military attachés and associate military attachés as well as secret agents to be posted abroad.

It served as its wartime capital during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).

During and after the Second Sino-Japanese War, from Nov 1937 to May 1946, it was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's provisional capital.

Known as one of the "Three Furnaces" of the Yangtze River, along with Wuhan and Nanjing, its summers are long and among the hottest and most humid in China, with highs of 33 to 34 °C in July and August in the urban area.