Sun Yat-sen in the context of "Republic of China (1912–1949)"

Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, lies between the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. It has an area of 35,808 square kilometres (13,826 square miles), with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanized population is concentrated. The combined territories under ROC control consist of 168 islands in total covering 36,193 square kilometres (13,974 square miles). The largest metropolitan area is formed by Taipei (the capital), New Taipei City, and Keelung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.

Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6,000 years ago. In the 17th century, large-scale Han Chinese immigration began under Dutch colonial rule and continued under the Kingdom of Tungning, the first predominantly Han Chinese state in Taiwanese history. The island was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty and ceded to the Empire of Japan in 1895. The Republic of China, which had overthrown the Qing in 1912 under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, assumed control following the surrender of Japan in World War II. But with the loss of mainland China to the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, the government moved to Taiwan in 1949 under the Kuomintang (KMT).

The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the sole ruling party of the country during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until its relocation to Taiwan, and in Taiwan ruled under martial law until 1987. The KMT is a centre-right to right-wing party and the largest in the Pan-Blue Coalition, one of the two main political groups in Taiwan. Its primary rival is the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the largest party in the Pan-Green Coalition. As of 2025, the KMT is the largest single party in the Legislative Yuan and is chaired by Cheng Li-wun.

The party was founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1894 in Honolulu, Hawaii, as the Revive China Society. He reformed the party in 1919 in the Shanghai French Concession under its current name. From 1926 to 1928, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek successfully unified China in the Northern Expedition against regional warlords, leading to the fall of the Beiyang government. After initially allying with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the First United Front, the party under Chiang purged communist members. It was the sole ruling party of China from 1928 to 1949 but gradually lost control while fighting the Empire of Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the CCP in the Chinese Civil War. In December 1949, the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan following its defeat by the communists.

The Warlord Era was the period in the history of the Republic of China between 1916 and 1928, when control of the country was divided between rival military cliques of the Beiyang Army and other regional factions. It began after the death of Yuan Shikai, the President of China after the Xinhai Revolution had overthrown the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China in 1912. Yuan's death on 6 June 1916 created a power vacuum which was filled by military strongmen and widespread violence, chaos, and oppression. The Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government of Sun Yat-sen, based in Guangzhou, began to contest Yuan's Beiyang government based in Beijing for recognition as the legitimate government of China.

The most powerful cliques were the Zhili clique led by Feng Guozhang, who controlled several northern provinces; the Anhui clique led by Duan Qirui, based in several southeastern provinces; and the Fengtian clique led by Zhang Zuolin, based in Manchuria. The three cliques often engaged in conflict for territory and hegemony. In mid-1917, after Yuan's successor Li Yuanhong attempted to remove Duan as premier, the general Zhang Xun forced Li to resign and made a brief attempt to restore the Qing dynasty, which was quashed by Duan's troops. Feng became the acting president, but was forced to step down by Duan in late 1918 and was replaced by Xu Shichang. In mid-1920, the new Zhili clique leaders, Cao Kun and Wu Peifu, defeated Duan in the Zhili–Anhui War in an alliance with Zhang Zuolin. A power struggle broke out between Cao and Zhang which ended with Cao's victory in the First Zhili–Fengtian War in 1922. Cao was president until 1924, when during the Second Zhili–Fengtian War he was betrayed by his subordinate Feng Yuxiang, who joined with Zhang to stage a coup against Cao. Feng and Zhang shared power and recalled Duan to serve as president before Zhang removed them both in 1926; in 1927, he declared himself Generalissimo.

The Three Principles of the People (Chinese: 三民主義; pinyin: Sānmín Zhǔyì), also known as the Three People's Principles, San-min Doctrine, San Min Chu-i, or Tridemism is a political philosophy developed by Sun Yat-sen as part of a philosophy to improve China during the Republican Era and later in Taiwan during the Dang Guo era. The three principles are often translated into and summarized as nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people (or welfarism). This philosophy has been claimed as the cornerstone of the nation's policy as carried by the Kuomintang; the principles also appear in the first line of the national anthem of the Republic of China.

Chinese nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts that the Chinese people are a nation and promotes the cultural and national unity of all Chinese people. According to Sun Yat-sen's philosophy in the Three Principles of the People, Chinese nationalism is evaluated as multi-ethnic nationalism, which should be distinguished from Han nationalism or local ethnic nationalism.

Modern Chinese nationalism emerged in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in response to China's humiliating defeat at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War and the invasion and pillaging of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance. In the aftermath of both events, China was forced to pay financial reparations and grant special privileges to foreigners. The nationwide image of China as a superior Celestial Empire, which was located at the center of the universe, was shattered, and last-minute efforts to modernize the old system were unsuccessful. These last-minute efforts were best exemplified by Liang Qichao, a late Qing reformer who failed to reform the Qing government in 1896 and was later expelled from China and fled to Japan, where he began to develop his ideas of Chinese nationalism.

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 Nationalist government, Nationalist regime and Nationalist China, officially the National Government of the Republic of China, refer to the government of the Republic of China from 1 July 1925 to 20 May 1948, led by the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) under Chiang Kai-shek.

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 initially governed the country as a one-party state under the Kuomintang, and was subsequently given international recognition as the legitimate representative of China, with Chiang as a de facto leader of the country under a military dictatorship. The Nationalist government would then experience many further 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 1947.

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.