Nationalist government in the context of "Republic of China (1912–1949)"

The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part of World War II, and often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. It is known in China as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

On 18 September 1931, the Japanese staged the Mukden incident, a false flag event fabricated to justify their invasion of Manchuria and establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo. This is sometimes marked as the beginning of the war. From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan engaged in skirmishes, including in Shanghai and in Northern China. Nationalist and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces, respectively led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, had fought each other in the Chinese Civil War since 1927. In late 1933, Chiang Kai-shek encircled the Chinese Communists in an attempt to finally destroy them, forcing the Communists into the Long March, resulting in the Communists losing around 90% of their men. As a Japanese invasion became imminent, Chiang still refused to form a united front before he was placed under house arrest by his subordinates who forced him to form the Second United Front in late 1936 in order to resist the Japanese invasion together.

The Communist Party of China (CPC), commonly known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP won the Chinese Civil War against the Kuomintang and proclaimed the establishment of the PRC under the chairmanship of Mao Zedong in October 1949. The CCP has since governed China and has had sole control over the country's armed forces and law enforcement. As of 2024, the CCP has more than 100 million members, making it the second largest political party by membership in the world.

In 1921, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao founded the CCP with the help of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist International. Although the CCP aligned with the Kuomintang (KMT) during its initial years, the rise of the KMT's right-wing under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek and subsequent massacres of tens of thousands of CCP members resulted in a split and a prolonged civil war between the CCP and KMT. During the next ten years of guerrilla warfare, Mao Zedong rose to become the most influential figure in the CCP and the party established a strong base among the rural peasantry with its land reform policies. Support for the CCP continued to grow throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the CCP emerged triumphant in the communist revolution against the Nationalist government. The CCP established the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949 and the remnants of the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan shortly after.

The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermittently from 1 August 1927 until Communist victory resulted in their total control over mainland China on 10 December 1949.

The war is generally divided into two phases with an interlude: from August 1927 to 1937, the First United Front alliance of the KMT and CCP collapsed during the Northern Expedition, and the Nationalists controlled most of 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. However, armed clashes between the groups remained common. Exacerbating the divisions within China further was the formation of the Wang Jingwei regime, a Japan-sponsored puppet government led by Wang Jingwei, which was established to nominally govern the regions of China that came under Japanese occupation.

Following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, the remnants of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC), alongside many refugees, retreated to the island of Taiwan (Formosa) beginning on December 7, 1949. The exodus is sometimes called the Great Retreat (Chinese: 大撤退) in Taiwan. The Nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT), its officers, and approximately 2 million ROC troops took part in the retreat, in addition to many civilians and refugees, fleeing the advance of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP, who now effectively controlled most of mainland China, spent the subsequent years purging any remnant Nationalist agents in western and southern China, solidifying the rule of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC).

ROC troops mostly fled to Taiwan from provinces in southern China, in particular Sichuan Province, where the last stand of the ROC's main army took place. The flight to Taiwan took place over four months after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the founding of the PRC in Beijing on October 1, 1949. The island of Taiwan remained part of Japan during the occupation until Japan severed its territorial claims in the Treaty of San Francisco, which came into effect in 1952. In addition, some of the ROC troops in Yunnan also fled to Burma, where the insurgency lasted until 1961.

The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The purpose of the campaign was to reunify China, which had become fragmented in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution. The expedition was led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and was divided into two phases. The first phase ended in a 1927 political split between two factions of the KMT: the right-leaning Nanjing faction, led by Chiang, and the left-leaning faction in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei. The split was partially motivated by Chiang's Shanghai Massacre of Communists within the KMT, which marked the end of the First United Front. In an effort to mend this schism, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as the commander of the NRA in August 1927, and went into exile in Japan.

The second phase of the Expedition began in January 1928, when Chiang resumed command. By April 1928, the nationalist forces had advanced to the Yellow River. With the assistance of allied warlords, including Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang, the nationalist forces secured a series of decisive victories against the Beiyang Army. As they approached Beijing, Zhang Zuolin, leader of the Manchuria-based Fengtian clique, was forced to flee and was later assassinated shortly thereafter by the Japanese. His son, Zhang Xueliang, took over as the leader of the Fengtian clique, and in December 1928, announced that Manchuria would accept the authority of the nationalist government in Nanjing. With the final piece of China under KMT control, the Northern Expedition concluded successfully and China was reunified, heralding the start of the Nanjing decade.

Mao Zedong (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976) was a Chinese politician, communist revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and led the country from its establishment until his death in 1976. Mao served as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1943 until his death, and as the party's de facto leader from 1935. His theories, which he advocated as a Chinese adaptation of Marxism–Leninism, are known as Maoism.

Born to a peasant family in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao studied in Changsha and was influenced by the 1911 Revolution and ideas of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism. He was introduced to Marxism while working as a librarian at Peking University, and later participated in the May Fourth Movement of 1919. In 1921, Mao became a founding member of the CCP. After the start of the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and CCP, Mao led the failed Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan in 1927, and in 1931 founded the Jiangxi Soviet. He helped build the Chinese Red Army, and developed a strategy of guerilla warfare. In 1935, Mao became leader of the CCP during the Long March, a military retreat to the Yan'an Soviet in Shaanxi, where the party began rebuilding its forces. The CCP allied with the KMT in the Second United Front at the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, but the civil war resumed after Japan's surrender in 1945. In 1949, Mao's forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan.

Wang Zhaoming (4 May 1883 – 10 November 1944), widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician and poet who was president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang (KMT), leading a government in Wuhan in opposition to the centrist Nationalist 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, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the centrist faction of Kuomintang, gradually became dominant among the party. Wang remained inside the Kuomintang, but continued to have disagreements with Chiang. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Wang accepted an invitation from the Japanese to form a collaborationist government in Nanjing, of which he served as the head of state until his death shortly before the End of World War II in Asia. Although he is still regarded as an important contributor in the 1911 Revolution, his collaboration with Imperial Japan is a subject of academic debate, and the typical narratives often regard him as a traitor with his name becoming synonymous with treason.

The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was the printed agreement that formalized the surrender of Japan, marking the end of hostilities in World War II. It was signed by representatives from Japan and from the Allied nations: the United States, China, the United Kingdom (UK), the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. The signing took place on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.

The date is sometimes known as Victory over Japan Day. However, that designation more frequently refers to the date of Emperor Hirohito's Gyokuon-hōsō (Imperial Rescript of Surrender), the radio broadcast announcement of the acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration at noon Japan Standard Time on 15 August.