INTRODUCTION: ORIGIN OF THE KUOMINTANG AND BACKGROUND OF THE CROSS-STRAIT CONFLICT

Sung Chiao-jen organized the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1912, under the nominal leadership of Sun Yat-sen, to succeed the Revolutionary Alliance. The original KMT programme called for parliamentary democracy and moderate socialism. In 1913, President Yüan Shih-kai of China suppressed the KMT although it held a majority in the first national assembly. Under Sun Yat-sen, the party established unrecognized revolutionary governments at Guangzhou in 1918 and 1921 and even sent a delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. Sun accepted aid from the USSR, and after 1922 many Comintern agents, notably Michael Borodin and V K Blücher, helped reorganize the KMT. At the party congress in 1924 at Guangzhou, a coalition including Communists adopted Sun's political theory, which included the Three Principles of the People – nationalism, democracy and people's livelihood. Sun thought that Chinese national reconstruction must follow these stages: military government, tutelage under the KMT and popular sovereignty.

In 1926, KMT General Chiang Kai-shek launched the Northern Expedition against the Beijing government. After halting temporarily in 1927, when the Communists were purged and the civil war between the two factions began, the KMT finally captured Beijing in 1928. The KMT government at Nanjing received diplomatic recognition in 1928 and the period of tutelage began. After several KMT military campaigns, the Communists were forced to withdraw from their bases in south and central China and establish new strongholds in the northwest.