The 1911 Revolution led by Sun Yatsen (1866–1925) overthrew the Qing Dynasty, ending imperial rule in China. Sun Yatsen proclaimed China a republic and thereby opened an era of unprecedented change for Chinese society. In 1912 Sun Yatsen turned over leadership of the republican government to the other central figure in the revolution, Yuan Shigai (Yüan Shih-k’ai). Called out of retirement to save the dynasty, Yuan (1859–1916) betrayed the Qing Dynasty’s Manchu leaders and convinced the revolutionaries that he could unite the country peacefully and prevent foreign intervention. Once elected president of the republic, however, Yuan concentrated on building his own power. In 1913 he used military force to dissolve China’s parliament and ruled as a dictator. China’s first modern revolution had failed.

The extent of the failure became apparent only after Yuan’s death in 1916, when the central government in Beijing almost disintegrated. For more than a decade thereafter, power resided in a multitude of local military leaders, the so-called warlords. Their wars, taxes, and corruption created terrible suffering.

Foreign imperialism intensified the agony of warlordism. Japan’s expansion into Shandong and southern Manchuria during World War I (see “The War Becomes Global” in Chapter 28) angered China’s growing middle class and enraged China’s young patriots (see Map 29.2). On May 4, 1919, five thousand students in Beijing exploded against the decision of the Paris Peace Conference to leave the Shandong Peninsula in Japanese hands. This famous incident launched the May Fourth Movement, which opposed both foreign domination and warlord government.

The May Fourth Movement, which was both strongly pro-Marxist and passionately anti-imperialist, looked to the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as a model for its own nationalist revolution. In 1923 Sun Yatsen decided to ally his Nationalist Party, or Guomindang, with Lenin’s Communist Third International and the newly formed Chinese Communist Party. The result was the first of many so-called national liberation fronts.

Sun, however, was no Communist. In his Three Principles of the People, elaborating on the official Nationalist Party ideology — nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood — nationalism remained of prime importance. Democracy, in contrast, had a less exalted meaning. Sun equated it with firm rule by the Nationalists, who would improve people’s lives through land reform and welfare measures.

Sun planned to use the Nationalist Party’s revolutionary army to crush the warlords and reunite China under a strong central government. When Sun unexpectedly died in 1925, Jiang Jieshi (traditionally called Chiang Kai-shek) (1887–1975) took his place. In 1926 and 1927 Jiang led Nationalist armies in a successful attack on warlord governments in central and northern China. In 1928 the Nationalists established a new capital at Nanjing.

In fact, national unification was only skin-deep. China remained a vast agricultural country plagued by foreign concessions, regional differences, and a lack of modern communications. Moreover, the uneasy alliance between the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party had turned into a bitter, deadly rivalry. Fearful of Communist subversion of the Nationalist government, Jiang decided in April 1927 to liquidate his left-wing “allies” in a bloody purge. Chinese Communists went into hiding and vowed revenge.