Republic of China (1912–49) | Wikipedia audio article

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Republic of China (1912–49)

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"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
- Socrates



SUMMARY
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The Republic of China, in the period up to 1949, was a sovereign state in East Asia that occupied the territories of modern China, and for part of its history Mongolia and Taiwan. It was founded in 1912, after the Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty, was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution. The Republic's first president, Sun Yat-sen, served only briefly before handing over the position to Yuan Shikai, former leader of the Beiyang Army. His party, then led by Song Jiaoren, won the parliamentary election held in December 1912. Song was assassinated shortly after, and the Beiyang Army led by Yuan Shikai maintained full control of the government in Beijing. Between late 1915 and early 1916, Yuan tried to reinstate the monarchy, before abdicating after popular unrest. After Yuan's death in 1916, members of cliques in the former Beiyang Army claimed their autonomy and clashed with each other. During this period, the authority of the Beiyang government was weakened by a brief restoration of the Qing dynasty.
In 1921, Sun's Kuomintang (KMT) established a rival government in the southern city of Guangzhou together with the fledgling Communist Party of China (CPC). The economy of the north, overtaxed to support warlord adventurism, collapsed between 1927 and 1928. General Chiang Kai-shek, who became KMT leader after Sun's death, started his military Northern Expedition campaign in order to overthrow the government in Beijing. The central government was overthrown in 1928 and Chiang established a new nationalist government in Nanjing. In April 1927, he massacred communists in Shanghai, which forced the CPC into armed rebellion, marking the beginning of the Chinese Civil War.
There was industrialization and modernization, but also conflict between the Nationalist government in Nanjing, the CPC, remnant warlords, and the Empire of Japan. Nation-building took a backseat to war with Japan when the Imperial Japanese Army launched an offensive against China in 1937 that turned into a full-scale invasion. After the unconditional surrender of Japan in 1945, fighting quickly resumed between the KMT and the CPC, with both sides receiving foreign assistance due to the ongoing friction between the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1947, the Constitution of the Republic of China replaced the Organic Law of 1928 as the country's fundamental law. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party established the People's Republic of China, overthrowing the Nationalist government on the Chinese mainland, which retreated to Taiwan, and relocated its capital from Nanjing to Taipei.