Kuomintang and Communists
After initial setbacks, Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang (also known
as the Guomindang, KMT or Nationalist Party), which had emerged as the
dominant political force after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, managed to
establish a secure base in southern China, and began training a National
Revolutionary Army (NRA) with which to challenge the northern warlords.
Meanwhile, talks between representatives of the Soviet Communist International
(Comintern)-the international body dedicated to world revolution-and prominent
Chinese Marxists eventually resulted in several Chinese Marxist groups
banding together to form a Communist Party of China at a meeting in Shanghai
in 1921.
The Comintern, from 1922, pushed the CPC to ally with the Kuomintang.
The union was short-lived. After Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925 a power struggle
emerged in the Kuomintang between those sympathetic to the Communists
and those who - headed by Chiang Kaishek - favored a capitalist state
dominated by a wealthy elite and supported by a military dictatorship.