Republic of China (1912–1949)

The Republic of China on the mainland was the Asian republic proclaimed at Nanjing on 1 January 1912 after the Xinhai Revolution toppled the Qing, ending two thousand years of emperors over eleven million square kilometres and, by 1949, five hundred and forty-one million people, the most populous country on earth. Sun Yat-sen yielded the presidency to Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army; Yuan's 1915 imperial bid collapsed and his death in 1916 left warlords carving the provinces. Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition of 1926 to 1928 reunited the country under the Kuomintang's one-party Nationalist government at Nanjing, which built railways, a central bank, German-trained divisions and a new capital's boulevards. Japan's invasion of 1937 forced the government up the Yangtze to Chongqing for eight years of resistance; victory in 1945 restored Taiwan and a United Nations seat but not peace, and the Communists' 1949 triumph ferried the Republic across the strait it still holds.