NATIONALIST PARTY


Meaning of NATIONALIST PARTY in English

also called Kuomintang, Wade-Giles romanization Kuo-min Tang (KMT; National People's Party) political party that governed all or part of mainland China from 1928 to 1949 and subsequently ruled Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek and his successors. Originally a revolutionary league working for the overthrow of the Chinese monarchy, the Nationalists became a political party in the first year of the Chinese republic (1912). The party participated in the first Chinese parliament, which was soon dissolved by a coup d'tat (1913). This defeat moved its leader, Sun Yat-sen, to organize it more tightly, first (1914) on the model of a Chinese secret society and, later (192324), under Soviet guidance, on that of the Bolshevik party. The Nationalist Party owed its early successes largely to Soviet aid and advice and to close collaboration with the Chinese communists (192427). After Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925, leadership of the party passed gradually to Chiang Kai-shek, who brought most of China under its control by ending or limiting regional warlord autonomy (192628). Nationalist rule, inseparable from Chiang's, became increasingly conservative and dictatorial but never totalitarian. The party program rested on Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood. Nationalism demanded that China regain equality with other nations, but the Nationalists' resistance to the Japanese invasion of China (193145) was halfhearted compared to their determined attempts to suppress the Chinese Communist Party. The realization of democracy through successive constitutions (1936, 1946) was also largely a myth. Equally ineffective were attempts to improve the people's livelihood or eliminate corruption. The Nationalist Party's failure to effect such changes itself derived partly from weaknesses in leadership and partly from its unwillingness to radically reform China's age-old feudal social structure. After the defeat of Japan in 1945, civil war with the communists was renewed with greater vigour. In 194950, following the victories of the Chinese communists on the mainland, a stream of Nationalist troops, government officials, and other refugees estimated at 2,000,000 persons led by Chiang, poured onto Taiwan; a branch of the Nationalist Party that was opposed to Chiang's policies and supported continued resistance to the Japanese still exists on the mainland. Taiwan became the effective territory, apart from a number of islands off the China coast, of the Republic of China (Nationalist China). The Nationalists for many years constituted the only real political force, holding virtually all legislative, executive, and judicial posts. The first legal opposition to the Nationalist Party came in 1989, when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP; established 1986) won 21 of 101 seats in the Legislative Yuan.

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