Republic of China (1912–1949)

The Republic of China was proclaimed on 1 January 1912, after the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty, ending over two thousand years of imperial rule. It governed mainland China, in name or in fact, until 1949, when the Communists won the civil war and the Republic's government withdrew to Taiwan, where it continues today.

On 10 October 1911, an army uprising in Wuchang, in central China, sparked revolts across the provinces, which declared independence from the Qing. Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary leader, returned from abroad and became provisional president in Nanjing on 1 January 1912. To secure the abdication of the six-year-old emperor Puyi, on 12 February 1912, and avoid civil war, Sun gave the presidency to Yuan Shikai, the most powerful general of the old regime.

Yuan moved the capital to Beijing. The Nationalist Party, Kuomintang, founded by Sun, won the 1912–1913 elections, but its leader, Song Jiaoren, was assassinated in 1913, probably on Yuan's orders. Yuan crushed the "Second Revolution", dissolved parliament and, in 1915, accepted Japan's Twenty-One Demands. He declared himself emperor at the end of 1915, but provinces rebelled, and he abandoned the plan and died in 1916.

After Yuan's death, China fragmented. The government in Beijing, recognised abroad, was controlled by rival military cliques, while warlords ruled provinces. On 4 May 1919, students in Beijing protested against the Treaty of Versailles, which gave Germany's rights in Shandong to Japan, starting the May Fourth Movement, which promoted science, democracy and writing in vernacular Chinese. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921.

Sun Yat-sen reorganised the Kuomintang with Soviet help and allied with the Communists, founding the Whampoa Military Academy under Chiang Kai-shek. After Sun's death in 1925, Chiang led the Northern Expedition from 1926, defeating or absorbing many warlords. In April 1927 he turned on the Communists, massacring thousands in Shanghai. In 1928 his forces took Beijing, renamed Beiping, and the Nationalist government in Nanjing was internationally recognised. The "Nanjing decade" saw modernisation, roads, railways and education, but also corruption, repression and continued civil war against the Communists, who made the Long March in 1934–1935.

Japan seized Manchuria in 1931. In July 1937, after a clash at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, Japan launched a full-scale invasion. Japanese forces took Shanghai after a long battle, and in December 1937 Nanjing, where they carried out the Nanjing Massacre. The Nationalist government moved to Wuhan and then Chongqing, in Sichuan, which Japan bombed heavily. Nationalists and Communists formed a second united front. After 1941, China fought as one of the Allies, supported by the United States. The war killed perhaps 15 to 20 million Chinese. In 1945 China became a founding member of the United Nations with a permanent Security Council seat.

After Japan's surrender, civil war resumed in 1946. The Nationalists suffered from hyperinflation, corruption and low morale, while the Communists gained support with land reform. In 1948–1949 the Communists won decisive campaigns in Manchuria and at Huaihai. In October 1949 Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic in Beijing, and in December Chiang's government moved to Taipei. In Taiwan, which Japan had ruled from 1895 to 1945, the Nationalists ruled under martial law until 1987. Taiwan later became a democracy, and its status remains a central issue in relations with the People's Republic.

Our maps show the Republic of China on the 1914 and 1938 maps, with its largest outline, about 6.6 million square kilometres, on the 1914 map. Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai and Guangzhou lie inside it. On the 1920 and 1930 maps, the basemap shows the Warlord Era; on later maps, China.