National Revolutionary Army in the context of "Nanjing Massacre"

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.

The Marco Polo Bridge incident, also known as the Lugou Bridge incident or the July 7 incident, was a 3-day battle that began on 7 July 1937 in the district of Beijing between the 29th Army of the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China and the Imperial Japanese Army.

Since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, there had been many small incidents along the rail line connecting Beijing with the port of Tianjin, but all had subsided. On the night of 7 July, Japanese garrison troops at Lugouqiao held an unusual manoeuvre; and, alleging that a Japanese soldier was missing, demanded entry into the City of Wanping to conduct a search. Fighting broke out while the Japanese complaint was still under negotiation. However, the missing Japanese soldier had already returned to his lines. The Marco Polo Bridge incident is generally regarded as the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and military commander who led the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 until his death in 1975. His government was based in mainland China until it was defeated in the Chinese Civil War by Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, after which he continued to lead the ROC government on the island of Taiwan. Chiang served as leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party and the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), which was reorganized into the Republic of China Armed Forces in 1947, from 1926 until his death.

Born in Zhejiang, Chiang received a military education in China and Japan and joined Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui organization in 1908. After the 1911 Revolution, he was a founding member of the KMT and head of the Whampoa Military Academy from 1924. After Sun's death in 1925, Chiang became leader of the party and commander-in-chief of the NRA, and from 1926 to 1928 led the Northern Expedition, which nominally reunified China under a Nationalist government based in Nanjing. The KMT–CCP alliance broke down in 1927 following the KMT's Shanghai Massacre, starting the Chinese Civil War. Chiang sought to modernise and unify the ROC during the Nanjing decade, although hostilities with the CCP continued. After Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, his government tried to avoid a war while pursuing economic and social reconstruction. In 1936, Chiang was kidnapped by his generals in the Xi'an Incident and forced to form an anti-Japanese Second United Front with the CCP, and between 1937 and 1945 led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, mostly from the wartime capital of Chongqing. As the leader of a major Allied power, he attended the 1943 Cairo Conference to discuss the terms for Japan's surrender in 1945, including the return of Taiwan, where he suppressed the February 28 uprising in 1947.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). It consists of four services—Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force—and four arms—Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force, and Joint Logistics Support Force. It operates under the absolute leadership of the CCP and is led by the Central Military Commission (CMC) with its chairman as commander-in-chief.

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 in 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 two NRA communist units were reconstituted as the PLA in 1947. Since 1949, the PLA has used nine different military strategies, which it calls "strategic guidelines". The most important came in 1956, 1980, and 1993. Politically, the PLA and the paramilitary People's Armed Police (PAP) have the largest delegation in the National People's Congress (NPC); the joint delegation currently has 281 deputies—over 9% of the total—all of whom are CCP members.

The First United Front, also known as the KMT–CCP Alliance, of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was formed in 1923 as an alliance to end warlordism in China. Together they formed the National Revolutionary Army and set out in 1926 on the Northern Expedition.

The Republic of China Armed Forces (Chinese: 中華民國國軍; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó Guójūn; lit. 'Republic of China National Military') are the national military forces of the Republic of China (ROC), which is now based primarily in the Taiwan Area but formerly governed Mainland China prior to 1949. The armed forces comprise the Army, Navy (including the Marine Corps), Air Force, and Military Police Force. The military operates under the civilian control of the Ministry of National Defense, a cabinet-level body overseen by the Legislative Yuan.

Formerly known as the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), it was renamed the Republic of China Armed Forces in 1947 due to the implementation of the newly promulgated Constitution of the Republic of China. It was also historically referred to as the Chinese National Armed Forces (CNAF) prior to the establishment of the People's Republic of China on the Chinese mainland and the gradual loss of international recognition in the 1970s by the United Nations and many countries, including the ROC's close ally, the United States.

The Battle of Shanghai (traditional Chinese: 淞滬會戰; simplified Chinese: 淞沪会战; pinyin: Sōng hù huìzhàn) was a major battle fought between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China in the Chinese city of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It lasted from August 13 to November 26, 1937, and was arguably the single largest and longest battle of the entire war, with it even regarded by some historians as the first battle of World War II. It resulted in the Japanese capture of Shanghai and heavy destruction to the city.

It was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese eventually prevailed after over three months of extensive fighting on land, in the air and at sea. Both sides accused each other of using chemical weapons during the battle, with Japanese forces confirmed to have deployed poison gas at least thirteen times. Historian Peter Harmsen stated that the battle "presaged urban combat as it was to be waged not just during the Second World War, but throughout the remainder of the twentieth century" and that it "signalled the totality of modern urban warfare". It was the single largest urban battle prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, which occurred almost 5 years later.

Feng Yuxiang (simplified Chinese: 冯玉祥; traditional Chinese: 馮玉祥; pinyin: Féng Yùxiáng; IPA: [fə́ŋ ỳɕi̯ɑ́ŋ]; 6 November 1882 – 1 September 1948), courtesy name Huanzhang (焕章), was a Chinese warlord and later general in the National Revolutionary Army. He served as Vice Premier of China from 1928 to 1930.

At the start of the 1911 Revolution, Feng was an officer in the ranks of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army. He initially joined forces with the revolutionaries, but came to support Yuan's regime. In 1914, he converted to Christianity, earning him the nickname the "Christian General". He became a warlord in Northwest China, based in Shaanxi, and rose to a high rank within the Zhili clique, a powerful warlord faction. In 1924, during the Second Zhili-Fengtian war, Feng launched the Beijing Coup, which knocked the Zhili out of power, and re-organised his troops as the Guominjun. He brought Sun Yat-sen to Beijing for negotiations on re-unification, but this was not realized. In 1926, Feng was defeated by the Zhili and Fengtian cliques in the Anti-Fengtian War, and he retreated to the northwest. In 1926, Feng joined the Kuomintang's successful Northern Expedition. He later resisted Chiang's consolidation of power in the Central Plains War and was forced to retire, but in 1933 organized a new army which successfully drove the Japanese Army out of Chahar. In the 1930s, Feng held positions in the Nationalist government, including brief army commands at the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. He spent his later years supporting the anti-Chiang Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang before his death in 1948.