Republican China refers to China upon the founding of the republic to the Communist takeover in 1949. It was a period of great instability, characterized by civil wars and a war against Japan.

1. The 1911 revolution and the establishment of the Chinese republic:

• The Manchu government, ruling over China since 1644, was overthrown in Nov.1911. China adopted a new, Western style calendar, and Sun Yat-sen became the first president of the republic on Jan.1, 1912.
• Three months later, Sun stepped down from the presidency in favor of Yuan Shikai, former head of a military academy and imperial minister for the Manchu government. Yuan had greater clout in north China than Sun and became the president. He moved toward preparing himself to be the next emperor.
• In 1913, Sun launched a "Second Revolution" against Yuan, but failed. Sun fled to Japan.
• Yuan died in 1916 after the nation rose up against his coronation. Various warlords came to control the Beijing (Peking) governments.
• The remaining Chinese republicans fled south to Canton (Guangdong) and called themselves a government. China had two coexisting governments, with the north one recognized by foreign governments.

2. The Nationalists and the Communists:

• These were two modern political parties based on the Western political party system.
• The Nationalist Party was founded in 1912, based on a former anti-Manchu secret society called Tongmenghui.
• The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921, inspired by Soviet independence from Western European economic control and Soviet return of Chinese territories (spheres of influence in China under the tsars). It was very much based on the May Fourth spirit of science and technology, nationalism, and the Communist ideas of class and class struggle, and the realization of a better tomorrow.
• The Nationalist Party, led by Sun Yat-sen, allied with the Communists and the Soviet Union (1923-1927) seeking to break the warlord rule in northern China.
• Jointly they started a modern military academy, the Whoampa Academy, to train modern cadets, in Canton.
• Jointly, they embarked on a "Northern Expedition" to recover the Chinese north from the warlords (1926-28).
• The Nationalists primarily recruited among the landlords and professionals in urban areas. The Communists recruited from the urban and rural poor.
• When the Northern Expedition reached Shanghai in April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, successor to Sun Yat-sen who died in 1925, felt strong elong to go alone, and started to massacre Chinese Communists or suspects.
• The Chinese Communists were forced into underground, guerrilla warfare in southeast China.
• Continued Nationalist attacks on the Communist Soviet base led to the Long March, a migration of around 6,000 miles for the Communists from southeastern China to northwestern China without sufficient cloth. Only around 1/10 or fewer people finished the march.
• After the Communists moved to northwestern China, the Nationalists continued to hound them down.
• In 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria, and the Manchurian troops were ordered out without firing a shot. The Nationalist general ordered to attack the Communists, Zhang Xueliang, was a Manchurian general and held Chiang Kai-shek hostage to force him to ally with the Communists and fight Japan. This was called the Second United Front.

  3. The Anti-Japanese War

• The Janpanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, but full scale invasion of China occurred in 1937. And it involved primarily the eastern Chinese seaboard. The Nationalist government withdrew to Chongqing, the wartime capital in southwestern China, and the Communists continued to station their headquarters in Yanan, in northwestern China.
• While the Nationalists engaged the Japanese through regular warfare, the Communists did so largely through guerrilla warfare, in the process redistributing land to the peasants and winning popular support.
• The anti-Japanese war drew to an end with the American participation in the Pacific phase of WWII, and especially with the dropping of the two A-bombs.

  4. The Civil War (1945-1949)

• After the Japanese surrender, the Chinese Nationalists and Communists were on the verge of civil war again.
• The U.S. tried to mediate between the two groups. In early 1945, before the end of the war against Japan, the U.S. event sent a group of U.S. military advisers to Yanan (called the Dixie Mission) to observe the Communists and explore the possibility of cooperation.
• The coming of Ambassador Hurley in 1945 did not help the mediation between the two parties.
• Civil war started. And by early 1949, the Chinese Communists were taking over most of China. With U.S. help, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government withdrew to Taiwan. On Oct.1, 1949, Mao Tse-tung (Zedong), head of the Chinese Communists, pronounced the birth of the People's Republic of China.