Nationalist government

The Nationalist government, officially the National Government of the Republic of China, refers to the government of the Republic of China from 1 July 1925 to 20 May 1948, led by the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party.

Following the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen was elected to be China's 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 fiefs and rival governments. They were nominally reunified in 1928 under the Nanjing-based government led by 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, and the Chinese Civil War. 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 nearly three thousand years of imperial rule in China. Central authority waxed and waned in response to warlordism (1915–1928), Japanese invasion (1937–1945), and the Chinese Civil War (1927–1949), with central authority strongest during the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937), 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 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 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 CCP. 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 and moved their capital to Taipei while claiming that they were the legitimate government of the mainland.

Founding

After Sun's death on 12 March 1925, four months later on 1 July 1925, the National Government of the Republic of China was established in Guangzhou.

The following year, as Generalissimo of the National Revolutionary Army, Chiang Kai-shek became the de facto leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party. He especially headed the right-wing of the Nationalist Party, while the Communists formed part of the Party's left-wing. Chiang led the Northern Expedition through China with the intention of defeating the warlords and unifying the country. The National Revolutionary Army received significant aid from the Soviet Union; Chiang himself was surrounded by Soviet military advisors. Much of the Nationalist Party, however, became convinced, not without reason, that the Communists, under recent orders from the Comintern, wanted to break from the United Front and get rid of the KMT.

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 peasant associations supported by the CCP were attacking landlords and local gentry, who formed a base of political support for the KMT right-wing and recruitment for Nationalist soldiers. These events eventually led to the Chinese Civil War between the Nationalist Party and the CCP. Chiang Kai-shek pushed the CCP 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 CCP, 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 which was a provisional government led by the KMT to educate people about their political and civil rights, and the third stage would be constitutional government. By 1928, the Nationalists claimed that they had succeeded in reunifying China and were beginning the second stage, the period of so-called "tutelage". In 1931, they promulgated a provisional constitution that established the one-party rule of the KMT and promised eventual democratization. In practice, this meant that Chiang Kai-Shek was able to continue authoritarian rule.

Even had it been the KMT's intention, historians such as Edmund Fung argue that they may not have been able to establish a democracy under the circumstances of the time. Despite nominal reunification, the Chiang's Nationalist Government relied heavily on the support of warlords such as Ma Hushan, Yan Xishan, and Zhang Xueliang to exert control on the provinces. The loyalty of these figures was often highly suspect, and they frequently engaged in acts of open defiance, as in the Xi'an Incident of 1936, or even rebellion. In alliance with local landlords and other power-brokers, they blocked moderate land reforms that might have benefits the rural poor. Instead, the poor peasants remained a consistent source of recruits for the Communist Party. While weakened by frequent massacres and purges—historian Rudolph Rummel estimated that 1,654,000 people were killed by the KMT in anti-Communist purges during this period—the Communists were able to survive and posed a major latent threat to the regime. However, perhaps the biggest challenges came from within the administration itself. As Chiang Kai-Shek 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." Corruption was endemic at all levels of government. The tension between Chiang's centralizing tendencies and the warlords who supported him led to friction and inconsistent direction. Even the KMT itself was disunified, with the pro-Chiang factions of the CC Clique, Political Study Clique, and fascist-inspired Blue Shirts Society opposed by a left-wing faction under Wang Jingwei and a right-wing faction influenced by Hu Hanmin. To control the opposing KMT factions, Chiang relied increasingly on the National Revolutionary Army.

Economic growth and social improvements were mixed. The Kuomintang supported women's rights and education, the abolition of polygamy, and foot binding. The government of the Republic of China under Chiang's leadership also enacted a women's quota in the parliament with reserved seats for women. During the Nanjing Decade, the spread of education increased the literacy rate across China and promoted the ideals of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People of democracy, republicanism, science, constitutionalism, and Chinese Nationalism based on the Political Tutelage of the Kuomintang. However, periodic famines continued: in Northern China from 1928 to 1930, in Sichuan from 1936 to 1937, and in Henan from 1942 to 1943. In total, these famines cost at least 11.7 million lives. GDP growth averaged 3.9 per cent a year from 1929 to 1941 and per capita GDP about 1.8 per cent. Among other institutions, the Nationalist Government founded the Academia Sinica and the Central Bank of China. In 1932, China for the first time sent teams to the Olympic Games.

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

Following the defeat of Japan at the end of 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 to 31 January 1946. Representatives of the Kuomintang, CCP, 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 CCP and promulgated the Constitution of the Republic of China. The constitution was criticized by the CCP, 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 25 December 1946, promulgated by the National Government on 1 January 1947, and went into effect on 25 December 1947. 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 20 May 1948, after the Government of the Republic of China was established with the presidential inauguration of Chiang. The CCP, 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 National 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.

Authority within the Nationalist government ultimately lay with Chiang Kai-shek. All major policy changes on military, diplomatic, or economic issues required his approval. According to historian Odd Arne Westad, "no other leader within the GMD had the authority to force through even the simplest decisions.The practical power of high-ranking officials like ministers or the head of the Executive Yuan was more closely tied to their relationship with Chiang than with the formal authority of their position. Chiang created multiple layers of power in his administration which he sometimes played off each other to prevent individuals or cliques from gathering power that could oppose his authority.

The Nationalist government exercised relatively little control in China's border regions, where the political fragmentation along ethnic lines that began after the fall of the Qing dynasty continued.

Military

Republic of China Navy

The Ministry of the Navy () was a military ministry-level agency established by the National Government of the Republic of China on April 12, 1929, which was independent and existed parallel with the Military Affairs Commission at the time of establishment. Therefore, unlike the air force, the navy of the Nationalist Government was a fully independent service branch and was not part of the National Revolutionary Army.

The primary mission of the Ministry of the Navy was to rebuild the Republic of China Navy and to promote the development of maritime power. By 1937, however, most of the naval forces under its command were nearly annihilated in the early naval battles of the Second Sino-Japanese War by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

On January 1, 1938, with virtually no warships left under its control, the Ministry was dissolved and merged into the Navy Command Headquarters under the Military Affairs Commission of the Nationalist Government.

National Revolutionary Army

The National Revolutionary Army (NRA; zh, t=國民革命軍, s=国民革命军, p=Guómín Gémìng Jūn, w=Kuo-min Ke-ming Chün, first=t), pre-1928 sometimes shortened to Revolutionary Army () and between 1928 and 1947 as National Army (), was the Military Arm of the Kuomintang (KMT) from 1925 until 1947, commanded by the Military Affairs Commission of the Chinese Nationalist government. Compared to the Republic of China Navy, the NRA was more distinctly party-owned, with tighter political control by the Kuomintang, whereas the Navy retained more characteristics of a state-operated and professionally autonomous force.

Originally organised 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.

Beginning in 1928, following the April 12 Incident and the KMT's split with the Communist factions, the NRA also launched a series of Encirclement Campaigns aimed at eradicating Communist base areas in the Chinese rural area. The NRA later fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War against the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy, and then, in the Chinese Civil War, against the People's Liberation Army.

The NRA included a largely independent aviation component which was known as the Air Force (), and western historians usually described the air arm as the Chinese Nationalist Air Force, additionally it had an independent Air Defense force which was not under the commanding structure of any of those "Land Force" units.

Prior to the War, the NRA also had a Motor Torpedo Boat squadron, co existing with the Navy's torpedo flotilla, which is operated by the Submarine and Motor Torpedo Boat College, known as the S.M.C..

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 was 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.

Miscellaneous Forces and Militias

Local Security Forces, Warlord-affiliated troops, and Local Militias played a significant auxiliary role in the broader military structure of the Nationalist China, especially after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. While not part of the centralized, regular National Revolutionary Army (NRA), many of these units were nominally incorporated into the NRA system during wartime mobilisation, often retaining their own command structures, political loyalties, and local identities.

*Local Security Forces () were provincial or county-level garrison forces originally organised for maintaining internal order, later drawn into frontline duties despite limited training and equipment. That said, in wealthier counties or around major cities, some of those Local Security Force Regiments were relatively well-funded and well-equipped, with training, pay, and even armament levels comparable to core NRA (Central Army) units. Their performance and discipline, in such cases, could approach regular army standards.
*Warlord-affiliated troops (), typically former warlord troops integrated through political negotiation rather than military standardisation, were loosely affiliated with the NRA but often operated with minimal coordination or discipline.
*The Local Militias () referred to grassroots self-defense militias, often hastily armed and locally raised, who provided rear-area security or guerrilla resistance.

Although included under the broader NRA command on paper, these irregular forces were frequently marked by inconsistent combat effectiveness, poor logistical support, and divergent loyalties, complicating centralized command and control. Nonetheless, they constituted a substantial portion of the Chinese war effort, especially in regional defense and in supplementing the under-resourced central army.

An important exception, among those Warlord-affiliated troops, however, was the troops of the Sichuan Clique, known as the Szechwan Troops () who earned a reputation for their tenacious combat performance, resilience under extreme conditions, and remarkable tolerance for heavy casualties. Due to their consistent battlefield contributions during the Second Sino-Japanese War, most Sichuan clique units were formally recognised as part of the National Revolutionary Army, rather than being treated as auxiliary or irregular forces.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the two armed corps of the Chinese Communist were nominally incorporated into the National Revolutionary Army (while retaining separate commands), as the Eighth Route Army () and the New Fourth Army () respectively. Both broke away to form the People's Liberation Army shortly after the end of the war.

Forced Conscription in WWII

Forced conscription campaigns were conducted by the military. In many rural places, military forces employed press-gangs, kidnappings, and mass roundups to meet numerical quotas. In some extreme cases, less than half of conscripts survived to complete basic training.

These harsh practices were especially prevalent among units not directly controlled by the central government, and among rapidly raised local militias and civil defense groups, and described by Rudolph Rummel as such:

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.

Because of the Nationalist government's increasing inability to fund the military, especially after Japan's success in Operation Ichigo, Nationalist authorities overlooked military corruption and smuggling. The Nationalist army increasingly turned to raiding villages to press-gang peasants into service and force marching them to assigned units.

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.

The economy was badly hit by the Great Depression from 1931 to 1935 and Japan's occupation of Manchuria in 1931. After Japan's invasion of Manchuria, the Republic of China began state-led industrialization policies as a response to the risk of full-scale war with Japan. In 1932, it formed a clandestine industrial mobilization government agency, the National Defense Planning Commission (renamed in 1935 to the National Resources Commission). Chinese policymakers drew inspiration from economic models used by the Soviet Union, Japan, and Germany.

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 US$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. Under this peculiar context for rural China, the Chinese Rural Reconstruction Movement was implemented by some social activists who graduated as professors of the United States with tangible but limited progress in modernizing the tax, infrastructural, economical, cultural, and educational equipment and mechanisms of rural regions. The social activists actively coordinated with the local governments in towns and villages since the early 1930s. However, this policy was subsequently neglected and canceled by the Nationalist government due to rampant wars and the lack of resources following the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second Chinese Civil War.

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. Nearly all studies of the collapse of the Nationalist government identify hyperinflation as a major factor in the government's failure.

The communist land redistribution movement was an important factor in the Nationalists' defeat, particularly because it linked the interests of peasants in the north and northeast to the Communists' success.

In 1949, the People's Liberation captured Beijing and later Nanjing as well. The People's Republic of China was proclaimed in Beijing on 1 October 1949. The Republic of China central government relocated to Taipei on 7 December 1949, 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 Nanjing, the capital at the time, with only one exception.

When the city of Nanjing 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)
** Tibet (1912–1951)
** Mongolian People's Republic
* Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)
* Diplomatic history of World War II
* Nanjing decade

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

* Bergère, Marie-Claire. ''Sun Yat-Sen'' (1998), 480 pages, the standard biography
* Boorman, Howard L., et al., ed. '' Biographical Dictionary of Republican China.'' (Vol. I–IV and Index. 1967–1979). 600 short scholarly biographie
excerpt and text search
Also online at Internet Archive.
** Boorman, Howard L. "Sun Yat-sen" in Boorman, ed. ''Biographical Dictionary of Republican China'' (1970) 3: 170–189
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
* 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), 560 pp
* 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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