Power Struggle in China
Chinese rival leaders, Chiang Kai-shek on the left and Mao Zedong on the right
In 1912, after the overthrow of the final Chinese dynasty, two clashing parties competed for power. Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionary who played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. In 1911, he founded the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), where he served as its first leader. The Chinese Communist Party was formed in 1921. In 1923 the Communists and the Nationalists formed an alliance until Sun Yat-sen died in 1925 and Chiang Kai-shek came to power. Chiang Kai-shek began to see the Communists as a threat, an even bigger one than the Japanese. Therefore, he struck against the Communists in what is known as the Shanghai Massacre in 1927. Chiang Kai-shek even initiated what is known as the New Life Movement in 1934. It was an attempt to counter Communism ideology with a mix of traditional Confucianism, Western Christianity, nationalism, and authoritarianism that have some similarities to fascism. it attempted to build up a morale in a nation that was besieged with corruption, factionalism, and opium addiction. In the years of 1934 and 1935, the Nationalist Army of Chiang Kai-shek took over a Communist base in Shanghai and the Communists broke through the siege, marching westward 6,000 miles to Guizhou province. In 1937, the Rape of Nanjing occurred, which was a mass murder and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Chinese Civil War took place in 1945, when the forces of the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party fought for power of China. The Great Leap Forward was the economic and social campaign of the Chinese Communist Party that aimed to transform the country into a modern communist society through the process of agriculturalization, industrialization, and collectivization in the year of 1958. The competition for power in China during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was a violent revolutionary social movement that took place from 1966 to 1976 that was designed to purge capitalist thought from the country and was instituted by Mao Zedong. A number of events, including the Shanghai Massacre, the New Life Movement, the Long March, the Rape of Nanjing, the Chinese Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, contributed greatly to the struggle for power in China between the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Japanese.