Republic of China (1912–1949)
The Republic of China was officially proclaimed on the 1st of January 1912, ending more than two thousand years of dynastic rule in a single stroke. Sun Yat-sen stood as provisional president of a nation that had never known anything but emperors. Within six weeks, the child emperor Puyi abdicated on the 12th of February 1912, and a civilization that had sustained itself through imperial succession since antiquity was suddenly, irreversibly, a republic.
What follows is a story of almost impossible ambition. A country of hundreds of millions of people, carved up by warlords, invaded by Japan, torn by civil war, and struggling to invent modern institutions from nothing. By 1949, that republic would claim 541 million people - the most populous country on earth - yet find itself driven from the mainland entirely. How does a government that earned a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council end up retreating to a single island? That is the question this documentary sets out to answer.
Sun Yat-sen chose the official Chinese name of the new state with deliberate care, drawing directly from the language of the Tongmenghui's 1905 party manifesto. That document declared four goals for the Chinese revolution: to expel the Manchu rulers, revive China, establish a people's state, and distribute land equally among the people.
On the 15th of July 1916, in a welcoming speech to Cantonese delegates in Shanghai, Sun explained why he preferred the term he chose over alternatives. He associated rival models with the limiting, authoritarianism-prone character of Euro-American representative republicanism. He wanted something more grounded in the people themselves.
On the 20th of October 1923, at a national conference for youths in Guangzhou, he made the point with a sharp parallelism. An emperor's country is ruled by only one emperor, he said. A people's country is ruled by all four hundred million people. The phrase was both a governing philosophy and a promise the republic would spend decades failing to keep.
The influence of that naming choice reached beyond China's borders. The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, founded in 1919 within China itself, replaced the old imperial designation Daehan Jeguk with Daehan Minguk, echoing the same semantic structure. Today, the Republic of China and the Republic of Korea remain unique among nations in their shared choice of that specific term as an equivalent for 'republic.'
Yuan Shikai extracted a price for ending the Qing dynasty. Sun Yat-sen had promised him the presidency if he could remove the emperor by force, and Yuan collected. Elected the first formal president of the ROC in 1913, he quickly showed what kind of ruler he intended to be. He threatened Senate members with execution if they disagreed with his decisions and dissolved the Kuomintang after a failed 1913 revolt by southern governors.
The nadir came in 1915, when Yuan declared himself Emperor of China. He tried to abolish the provincial system and increase central control, which infuriated the regional gentry and military governors who depended on those structures for their own power. Unpopular and abandoned by his supporters, Yuan backed down and abdicated, dying of natural causes shortly afterward in 1916.
His death left a vacuum that dozens of men rushed to fill. The Beiyang Army he had commanded split along factional lines, with each general commanding the personal loyalty of his own troops. Song Jiaoren, who had led the Kuomintang to electoral victories in the December 1912 to February 1913 elections by building a coalition of gentry, landowners, and merchants, had already been assassinated on the 20th of March 1913, at Yuan's behest. The parliament of 1913 was later reconvened simply to give a veneer of legitimacy to whoever happened to hold Beijing at a given moment. Real power belonged to the generals.
The Warlord Era that followed was defined by decentralized conflict between rival cliques. The Baoding Military Academy, established during the Qing dynasty, continued training officers throughout this period, graduating the majority of men who would serve in warlord armies and many who would later join the Nationalists.
Chiang Kai-shek came to lead the Kuomintang after Sun Yat-sen died in March 1925, inheriting both Sun's ambitions and his complicated Soviet alliance. Sun had agreed to form the First United Front with the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for Soviet assistance. By 1927, Chiang felt secure enough to end that arrangement. He purged the Communists, massacring thousands in Shanghai, before completing the Northern Expedition to reunify China under Nanjing in 1928.
The Nanjing decade that followed, from 1927 to 1937, was the republic's closest approach to stability. Several major government institutions were founded during this period, including the Academia Sinica and the Central Bank of China. The 1931 Civil Code gave women equal inheritance rights, banned forced marriage, and granted women the right to control their own money and initiate divorce. Women's suffrage was eventually included in the Constitution of 1936, though that constitution was not implemented until 1947.
Chiang's government sought assistance from Germany as a way of distancing itself from Soviet influence. German instructors trained a small number of elite divisions, perhaps around 40, and helped expand the Whampoa Military Academy into what became the Central Military Academy in Nanjing. Historians have debated the ideological character of the regime; scholar Lloyd Eastman argued that Chiang was influenced by European fascist movements and launched the Blue Shirts Society in imitation of them, while Stanley Payne judged this 'probably an exaggeration,' noting that the Blue Shirts exhibited some characteristics of fascism without clearly representing a fully formed fascist movement.
The National Revolutionary Army grew from 250,000 troops to around two million during this decade, organized into 200 divisions. China sent its first team to the Olympic Games in 1932. The highway network expanded from 1,000 km to 109,000 km. The railroad network would eventually reach 25,000 km by 1945, up from 9,600 km in 1912. Chiang himself, addressing the State Council about administrative dysfunction, described officials who 'just sit at their desks and gaze into space, others read newspapers and still others sleep.'
Japan had been pressing into Chinese territory for years before the full invasion came. In September 1931, Japan seized Manchuria and established the former emperor Puyi as head of the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932. The League of Nations, which the Republic of China had joined as a founding member, proved unable to act against Japanese defiance.
Chinese fury at the Japanese occupation was complicated by anger at Chiang's government, which many felt was more focused on anti-Communist campaigns than on resisting the invaders. That tension came to a head in December 1936, when Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang and forced to ally with the Communists against Japan, an event now known as the Xi'an Incident.
Open warfare began after the 7th of July 1937, when Chinese and Japanese troops clashed near the Marco Polo Bridge outside Beijing. Shanghai fell after a three-month battle that inflicted extensive casualties on both Japanese army and navy forces. Nanjing fell in December 1937, followed by mass murders and rapes in what became known as the Nanjing Massacre. The capital shifted to Wuhan, then to Chongqing, where the government remained until 1945.
The military cost was devastating. Half of the officers who graduated from the Central Military Academy were killed in the first few months of fighting. By 1937, over 100 of the navy's 120 ships had been sunk or destroyed by the end of the first two years of war. The ROC Air Force, which had grown to 645 aircraft and multiple factories by 1936, was largely destroyed by December 1937. From 1938 to 1940, the Soviet Volunteer Group, which sent 885 planes to China over those years, did much of the fighting against Japan alongside the remnants of Chinese air forces.
In January 1943, the United States and United Kingdom led the revision of their unequal treaties with China, and in December 1943 the United States repealed the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1880s. China held a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, representing the Big Four Allies. The war was estimated to have killed between 20 and 25 million Chinese, and by 1946 Chinese industries operated at only 20% capacity.
Japan surrendered in August 1945, and on the 25th of October 1945 Taiwan and the Penghu Islands were handed from Japanese to Chinese administration. The Republic of China emerged from the war nominally a great power but economically broken. Spiraling inflation, profiteering, speculation, and hoarding had gutted the economy. Starvation followed the war. Millions were left homeless.
In January 1946, through American mediation, a military truce was arranged between the Kuomintang and the Communists. It did not hold. Public fury at Nationalist governance was stoked by student protests in early 1947 over the mishandling of the Shen Chong rape case, and by further protests against monetary reforms later that year. The United States, concluding that no effort short of large-scale armed intervention could stop the coming war, withdrew General George Marshall's mission.
The numbers on paper favored the Nationalists. They had more men, more weapons, more territory, and more international support. But they were exhausted by the long war with Japan and divided by infighting among generals. Benjamin Valentino has estimated that atrocities during the Chinese Civil War resulted in the deaths of between 1.8 million and 3.5 million people between 1927 and 1949, on both sides.
In January 1949, Communist forces took Beiping without a fight and changed its name back to Beijing. Nanjing fell on the 23rd of April 1949. Major cities passed to Communist control through November with minimal resistance. On the 1st of October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek declared martial law in May 1949. A few hundred thousand Nationalist troops and approximately two million refugees, predominantly from the government and business community, fled to Taiwan. On the 7th of December 1949, Chiang proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China, a designation that has never formally changed.
Before the retreat to Taiwan, the Republic of China had diplomatic relations with 59 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, Japan, and the Holy See. It was a founding member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations, and it held China's permanent seat on the UN Security Council until 1971, when it was supplanted by the People's Republic.
The economy told a complicated story. Chinese industries grew considerably from 1928 to 1931. China's GDP peaked at 28.8 billion in 1932 before falling to 21.3 billion by 1934, then recovering to 23.7 billion by 1935. By 1930, foreign investment in China totaled 3.5 billion, with Japan leading at 1.4 billion and the United Kingdom at 1 billion. The war reversed all of this. By 1942-70% of Chinese industry was owned by the government, a direct consequence of wartime mobilization.
The rural economy suffered in ways that the Nationalists never solved. In 1932, agricultural prices had fallen to 41 percent of 1921 levels. By 1934, rural incomes in some areas had dropped to 57 percent of 1931 levels. The Communists' promise to redistribute land, offered to a massive rural population living through exactly this collapse, proved more persuasive than anything the Nationalist government put forward.
In 1948, a former British cruiser renamed Chongqing became the flagship of the Republic of China Navy. In February 1949, its crew mutinied and defected to the Communists. In April, the entire Yangtze fleet followed. The date of that April mutiny, the 23rd, is now considered the founding date of the People's Liberation Army Navy. It is a precise and fitting emblem of how the Republic of China lost the mainland: not in a single catastrophic battle, but through a long series of defections, exhaustions, and the slow transfer of loyalty to the other side.
Common questions
When was the Republic of China established and who was its first president?
The Republic of China was proclaimed on the 1st of January 1912, following the Xinhai Revolution, which began with the Wuchang Uprising on the 10th of October 1911. Sun Yat-sen served as the provisional president, having been elected by representatives from seventeen provinces on the 29th of December 1911. He handed the presidency to Yuan Shikai shortly afterward.
Why did the Republic of China government retreat to Taiwan in 1949?
The Kuomintang-led Nationalist government lost the Chinese Civil War to the Chinese Communist Party and its People's Liberation Army. Despite advantages in troops, weapons, and territory, the Nationalists were exhausted from the war with Japan, undermined by corruption and hyperinflation, and losing the battle for popular support, especially in the countryside. A few hundred thousand Nationalist troops and approximately two million refugees fled to Taiwan, and Chiang Kai-shek proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital on the 7th of December 1949.
What was the Nanjing decade in the Republic of China?
The Nanjing decade refers to the period from 1927 to 1937, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government was based in Nanjing and China experienced relative stability. During this period the Academia Sinica and the Central Bank of China were founded, Chinese industries grew considerably, the highway network expanded from 1,000 km to 109,000 km, and the 1931 Civil Code granted women equal inheritance rights and the right to initiate divorce.
How did the Second Sino-Japanese War affect the Republic of China's military?
The war, which began in July 1937, was catastrophic. Half of the officers who graduated from the Central Military Academy were killed in the first few months of fighting. Over 100 of the navy's 120 ships were sunk or destroyed within the first two years. The ROC Air Force, which had 645 aircraft in 1936, was largely destroyed by December 1937. The war was estimated to have killed between 20 and 25 million Chinese in total, and by 1946 Chinese industries operated at only 20% of pre-war capacity.
Was the Republic of China a member of the United Nations?
The Republic of China was a founding member of the United Nations and held a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, representing China as one of the Big Four Allies from World War II. The ROC retained that permanent seat until 1971, when it was supplanted by the People's Republic of China.
What caused the Warlord Era in the Republic of China?
The Warlord Era was triggered by the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916. Yuan had maintained control of the Beiyang Army by building personal loyalty between division commanders and their troops, which meant that after his death the army fragmented among rival generals rather than remaining under central authority. From 1916 onward, regional military commanders known as warlords controlled large portions of the country until the Kuomintang's Northern Expedition reunified China nominally in 1928.
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