Kuomintang

The Kuomintang Party (sometimes transliterated Guomindang), or the Chinese Nationalist Party, is the political party rivaling the Chinese Communist Party in Mainland China and the Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan. The party was founded in 1894 as the Revive China Society, being renamed in 1919.

Foundation
The corrupt Qing Dynasty, after selling out it's people for ages (especially under Empress Dowager Cixi whom killed her reformist predecessor) had been in decline all the nineteenth century. The Opium Wars and multiple uprisings had left country's main ports annexed into foreign concessions. Besides this, natural disdain came from the fact the Qing Dynasty was Manchu in form and origin, rather than Han Chinese.

Doctor Sun Yat-sen was one of the major if not the most prominent of those speaking out against the imperial government. During the defeats of the First Sino-Japanese War, he began the Revive China Society (the Kuomintang's pre-revolution name).

Chinese Mainland
After Xinhai Revolution and Second Revolution, the stage had been set for the rise of Sun Yat-sen's organization as the Beiyang Clique displaced the Qing Dynasty but began to fell into chaos itself when it's leader Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself a new Emperor of the Great Empire of China.

Soon thereafter Yuan Shikai was nearly overthrown for his attempt at forming his own dynasty, and then died shortly after. His Beiyang Army splintered into regional warlords consisting of former generals and bandits in the Warlord Era, and the stage was set as the Revive China Society became the Kuomintang Party and formed it's own government eventually in Canton to resist and defeat the warlords to form a unified and uncorrupt China.

The beliefs of the Kuomintang at this time emphasized Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, wanting a republican form of government in a center-right wing fashion which encouraged freedom of religion and capitalist business to thrive. The Kuomintang also was, by it's very namesake, nationalistic. This meant the Kuomintang wanted China to modernize but not throw away it's cultural identity, and to remain independent of foreign domination or influence.

Throughout the Second World War and the Chinese Civil War the Kuomintang became a prominent ally of the United States of America, and turned away the attempts of the Soviet Union to influence it. The Cold War that ensued helped the Chinese Communist Party's forces to defeat the Kuomintang's National Revolutionary Army due to it's losses fighting the Imperial Japanese Army with almost no communist assistance despite their pledge in the united front. This defeat forced Chiang Kai-shek to order a retreat to Taiwan with over 2 million Kuomintang.

Taiwanese Tutelage
Chiang Kai-shek soon set out turning Taiwan into a modernized and developed point to reclaim Mainland China. This period of tutelage required martial law due to the chaos of the retreat, and the subjugation of Taiwanese Natives whom wanted to secede from any Chinese.

Taiwan soon thereafter went through a period of modernization and development on an unprecedented scale, perhaps comparable to South Korea in the future. With a capitalist economy and strong military it developed into what China could be, becoming a great nation.

Chiang Kai-shek as Generalissimo oversaw this change as a temporary dictator for the Kuomintang, wanting to reinstitute the forms of government he had often led in Mainland China originally in Sun Yat-sen's design. By Chiang Kai-shek's death, Taiwan was a sight to behold.

Taiwanese Democracy
After Chiang Kai-shek's death, the government opened up the democratization he had originally intended as stability was seen to occur. The Kuomintang allowed the forming of it's opposition, the Democratic Progressive Party, which competes with it today.

The Kuomintang support eventual reclamation of Mainland China, preferably peacefully but militarily if forced due to Communist aggression, and the implementation of it's republican form of government in Mainland China. In Taiwan it proves to be a center-right party opposing the far-left Democratic Progressive Party, which harbors beliefs leans towards expulsion of the Kuomintang and making the Republic of China in exile become instead a "Republic of Taiwan", completely independent of Mainland China with a socialistic and liberal form of government.