Culture · Dynasty · 1912 CE–1949 CE
Republic of China dynasty
中华民国 · Zhōnghuá Mínguó. The Republican period — Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, the warlord era, the war against Japan, and the Civil War.
The dynasty
The fall of the Qing in 1912 produced the Republic of China, the first attempt at a non-monarchical Chinese state. Sun Yat-sen briefly served as provisional president before yielding to Yuan Shikai, whose authoritarian and would-be-monarchical ambitions fragmented the country into the warlord era (1916–28).
Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition reunified most of the country under the Nationalist (Kuomintang) government in 1927–28, with the capital at Nanjing. The Communist Party split from the KMT and survived the Long March (1934–35) to regroup at Yan'an. The Japanese invasion of 1937 forced the Nationalist government to retreat to Chongqing; the Sino-Japanese War (the Chinese front of the Second World War) cost an estimated 14–20 million Chinese lives.
After 1945 the resumption of the Chinese Civil War saw the Communist forces, under Mao Zedong, drive the Nationalists from the mainland in 1949. The Republic of China continues to exist on Taiwan; the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in Beijing on 1 October 1949.
Legacy
The Republican-era treaty-port architecture of Shanghai's Bund, Tianjin's concessions, and Nanjing's government district. The Nanjing Massacre Memorial. The Yan'an revolutionary heritage sites. The complex political legacy of the divided Chinese world after 1949.
Where to see it today
- Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum (Nanjing)
- Nanjing Presidential Palace
- Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall
- Yan'an revolutionary base
- The Bund, Shanghai
- Chongqing's wartime sites — Stilwell Museum, Eling Park air-raid shelters