The Kuomintang (China National People's Party) was China's largest revolutionary political organization until the end of the 1930s. Its main goal was to unite the state under the authority of the republican government. Founded by Sun Yat-sen and his followers in 1912, the Kuomintang was the largest party in both houses of the National Assembly, the newly formed legislature of China. But when the authoritarian president, Yuan Shikai, stripped the National Assembly of powers and dissolved it, he outlawed the party. The Kuomintang and its leaders began a 15-year struggle for the reunification of China and the restoration of a genuine republican government. The party created its own armed forces - the National Revolutionary Army, which achieved the reunification of the country in 1927-28. Under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang formed a government and led most of China until the Japanese occupation in the late 1930s.
Party History
The origins of the Kuomintang are nationalist political clubs, literary societies and reformist groups that were active in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Inside China, they were not numerous, secretive, and, apart from talking, they did little. Outside the country, they were more active and visible. Their members were mainly students and expatriates.
The most important of these two groups were the Chinese Revival Society (Sinzhunhoy) Sun Yat-sen, which called for the expulsion of foreigners and the formation of a single government, as well as the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenhui), which advocated the overthrow of the Manchu and the implementation of land reform.
These associations fueled political radicalism and nationalism, which became the driving force behind the 1911 revolution, which ultimately overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Although the Kuomintang was not yet formed, many of its future members participated in the congress in Nanjing in December 1911, where Sun Yat-sen was elected interim president of the new Republic of China.
Base
Officially, the Chinese National People's Party was founded in Beijing at the end of August 1912 by uniting Tongmenhui and 5 other nationalist groups. She was supposed to become parliamentary and participate in the newly created National Assembly. The main architect of the organization was Sun Jiaozhen - he became its first chairman. But the creator of the Kuomintang party and its ideological mentor was Yatsen. The organization participated in the elections to the National Assembly of the new republic, held in December 1912 and in January 1913. By modern standards, these elections were far from democratic. Only men over 21 years of age who either owned property or had completed primary education were allowed to vote. Only about 6% of all Chinese were eligible to register as voters. Low turnout in some areas further reduced the number of participants. Members of the Assembly were not directly elected, but elected by the appointed electors. The process was overshadowed by bribery and corruption.
Election victory
The Kuomintang party in both houses took about 45% of the seats (269 of 596 in the House of Representatives and 123 of 274 in the Senate). But soon the National Assembly turned out to be powerless, unable to exercise any power or control the presidency of Yuan Shikai. Democratic governments, representative assemblies, and political parties were new phenomena in China and did not inspire trust or respect. The National Assembly was moved from Nanjing to Beijing, where it was deprived of the support of the Kuomintang supporters who lived south of the supporting Yuan Shikai North. Most of the first term of the National Assembly was spent on disputes on how to limit the powers of the president. In March 1913, Sun Jiaozhen, the Kuomintang parliamentary leader and outspoken critic Yuan Shikai, was shot dead at a railway station in Shanghai. The assassination was almost certainly committed by order of supporters of the president, if not by himself.
Second revolution
While the president was embarking on the path of dictatorship, the Kuomintang organized an armed uprising, which was later called the Second Revolution. In July 1913, party members in four central and southern provinces (Anhui, Jiangsu, Hunan, and Guangdong) declared their independence from Beijing. Shikai responded quickly and brutally, sending troops south to capture Nanjing. Sun Yat-sen was forced to flee to Japan, as troops loyal to his party were destroyed or dispersed. In the last weeks of 1913, Shikai ordered the Kuomintang members to be stripped of all government posts. Shortly afterwards, the president announced the indefinite dissolution of the National Assembly. The Kuomintang began the transition to the revolutionary movement. Yatsen spent the next 3 years in Japan, trying to form a stronger and more disciplined movement. His first attempts were unsuccessful: few believed that the Kuomintang was a party capable of confronting the president or powerful military leaders. In 1917, shortly after the death of Yuan Shikai, Yat-sen returned to southern China, where he continued the struggle to revive the organization.
Revolutionary struggle
By 1923, Sun Yat-Sen successfully transformed the Kuomintang from a parliamentary party into an armed revolutionary group. Organization structure has become less democratic, more hierarchical and disciplined. She also became more authoritarian, as evidenced by the formation of a powerful executive committee and the rise of Sun Yat-sen to the rank of "great marshal." Now, leading the party, and not representing its members, he began to forge ties with people and groups that could help him reunite China and restore the republican government.
Union with the Communists
With the support of the southern field commanders, the Kuomintang was able to form a republic in Guangdong province with the capital Guangzhou, not far from Hong Kong and Macau. Sun Yat-sen also appealed for support from the Russian and Chinese Communists. A small group of advisers from the Soviet Union, led by Mikhail Borodin, arrived in Guangzhou in early 1923. They advised the Kuomintang leaders on party discipline, military training, and tactics. The USSR urged to unite with the young Chinese Communist Party, based in Shanghai. Yatsen agreed and promoted an alliance between the Kuomintang and the CCP, later known as the First United Front.
Military Academy
The first congress of the Kuomintang was held in early 1924. As expected, one of the main priorities of the party was the creation of an armed wing strong enough to suppress the dictatorship. In June 1924, with the support of Chinese and Soviet Communists, the Huangpu Military Academy was opened in Guangzhou. It was a modern educational institution, modeled on similar institutions in the Soviet Union. It was intended to create a revolutionary army from scratch. There were trained and ordinary, but the main attention was paid to the training of officers. Dozens of academy graduates became well-known commanders of both the National Revolutionary Army (the Kuomintang Armed Wing) and the Communist Red Army. Education and training was conducted by Chinese revolutionaries and Soviet military advisers sent by the Comintern. The first commandant of Huangpu was a young protege Yatsen Chiang Kai-shek, and the future CCP leader Zhou Enlai headed the political department. By the summer of 1925, the academy had released enough military men to assemble a new army. In August, nationalists combined it with four other provincial groups loyal to the Kuomintang. This combined force was baptized by the National Revolutionary Army and commanded by Chiang Kai-shek.
The death of the party leader
Another problem facing the Kuomintang in 1925 was who would lead the party after Sun Yat-sen. In the previous year, the leader was diagnosed with liver cancer, and after several months of constant deterioration in his state of health, he died in March 1925. For many years, Yatsen’s leadership and authority have played an important role in uniting the Kuomintang. It was an extremely factionalized party, combining all political points of view from communists to liberals, from militarists to neo-fascists. Yatsen's premature death at the age of 58 left the organization without a single nominee leader or obvious successor. Over the next two years, the Kuomintang experienced a power struggle between three potential leaders: left wing representative Wang Jingwei, conservative Hu Hannin and militarist Chiang Kai-shek.
Party of power
Gradually in 1926-28. the latter gained control of most of China, eliminating or limiting the regional autonomy of military leaders. Nationalist rule became increasingly conservative and dictatorial, but not totalitarian. Three principles of the Kuomintang party formed the basis of its program. This is nationalism, democracy and prosperity. The Kuomintang's nationalist ideology demanded that China restore equality with other countries, but its resistance to the Japanese invasion in 1931-45. was less decisive than trying to crush the Communist Party. The implementation of democracy through the consistent adoption of the constitution in 1936 and 1946 also was pretty much a myth. Attempts to improve the well-being of the people or to eradicate corruption were no more effective. The Nationalist Party’s inability to make such changes in and of itself stems partly from weak leadership and partly from its unwillingness to radically reform China’s centuries-old feudal social structure.
Evacuation
After the defeat of Japan in 1945, the civil war with the Communists was renewed with greater force. In the years 1949-50, after the victory of the latter on the mainland, the army, government officials and refugees in the amount of 2 million people, led by Chiang Kai-shek, crossed to Taiwan. The faction of the nationalist party that supported the CCP still exists on the mainland. Taiwan, including several small islands off the coast of China, has become an extremely successful country. Nationalists for many years constituted the only real political force, occupying almost all legislative, executive and judicial posts. The first legal opposition to the Kuomintang appeared in 1989, when the Democratic Progressive Party, created in 1986, won a fifth of the seats in the Legislative Yuan.
Modern politics
Nationalists remained in power during the 1990s, but in 2000, DPP presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian defeated Kuomintang candidate Lian Chang, who finished third. In the legislative elections next year, the party not only lost a majority in the legislature, but also lost in the number of seats. However, in 2004, nationalists and their allies regained control of the legislature, and in 2008 the Kuomintang took almost 3/4 of the seats in the legislature, crushing the DPP. In order to resolve Taiwan’s long-standing disagreements with China, the party adopted the Three None policy: no unification, no independence, no military confrontation.