Kuomintang

中國 國民黨 Zhōngguó Guómíndǎng National People's Party of China
Party leader	Lin Jung-te (acting)
Secretary General	Tseng Ming-chun (acting)
founding	August 25, 1912
Headquarters	Taipei
newspaper	Central Daily News, Kuomintang News Network
Alignment	Three principles of the people , conservatism , Chinese nationalism , anti-communism , historically: Chinese socialism
Colours)	blue
Parliament seats	38/113
Number of members	officially 1.05 million, active approx. 350,000 (January 2015)
Website	www.kmt.org.tw

The Kuomintang of China ( KMT ; Chinese  中國 國民黨 , Pinyin Zhōngguó Guómíndǎng , W.-G. Chungkuo Kuomintang  - "National People's Party of China"), also spelled Guomindang of China after the Pinyin transcription , is a party of the Republic of China in Taiwan . It founded the first Chinese republic in 1912 , gained control of mainland China in 1927, but had to retreat to Taiwan after the civil war against the Communist Party was lost in 1949 , where it formally continued the Republic of China and ruled largely dictatorially until 1990 . Today it is part of the democratic, multi-party system in Taiwan. It is seen as a party that is rather open to rapprochement with the People's Republic of China and advocates the one-China policy .

history

Sun Yat-sen (1911)

From the foundation to 1949

Sun Yat-sen traveled from the Chinese Empire to Hawaii , where he convinced overseas Chinese to join the Xingzhonghui (Society for the Renewal of China), a revolutionary organization whose aim was to overthrow the Manchu government in order to reform China .

At the beginning of the 20th century, the party reorganized several times. In 1905 the Xingzhonghui merged with several revolutionary groups , such as the Huaxinghui and the Guangfuhui , and merged as the Tongmenghui in Tokyo . Sun Yat-sen's party merged several times with various other political parties , so that on August 12th, ^July. / August 25, 1912 ^greg. founded the Kuomintang in Beijing . After the Qinghai Revolution and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, Chinese nationalists (including the Kuomintang) won a large majority in the National Assembly. The republic did not stabilize, however, and President Yuan Shikai dissolved parliament and had the Kuomintang banned.

Location of the first KMT National Congress in Guangzhou in 1924

In July 1914, the KMT reorganized itself in exile in Tokyo as the Revolutionary Party of China ( 中華 革命 黨 , Zhōnghuá gémìng dǎng ), but was affected by several divisions. On October 10, 1919, the party restructured itself in the French concession in Shanghai as the Kuomintang of China ( 中國 國民黨 , Zhōnghuá gémìng dǎng  - "Nationalist Party of China"). From January 20 to 30, 1924, the first national congress was held in Canton ( Guangzhou ).

It is important for the historical understanding of the Kuomintang that a broad spectrum of political opinions was represented in it, since it was initially the only party and, if one wanted to pursue politics, one had no choice but to join the Kuomintang. Later there was only the alternative between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Sun Yat-sen had supported an alliance with the Communist Party, while Chiang Kai-shek , his successor in the party leadership after Sun's death, refused to cooperate.

In 1924 the KMT formed the first united front with the CCP, which was founded in Shanghai in 1921, under the influence of the Comintern . Despite differing ideological views, both groups strived for liberation from the imperialist pressure of Japan and the western powers and the liberation of China from the warlords and thus the restoration of national unity. The partnership between the communists and the KMT was ended by Chiang Kai-shek. On May 30, 1927, after the capture of Shanghai , Chiang gave the order to fight communists and armed trade unionists with armed violence. 145 insurgents were killed. On July 15, 1927, the Kuomintang formally terminated the existing alliance with the communists under Mao Zedong . This led to a civil war for power in the state between the two groups.

Wing fighting

At the end of the 1920s there were the following factions:

• "Left" around Wang Jingwei with a moderate program of land reform.
• "Group of the military" around Chiang Kai-shek
• "Rights" with three subgroups:
  • "Old comrades," with Cai Yuanpei , Wu Zhihui (also known as Wu Jingheng), Li Shizeng, and others. a. To keep this group engaged, Sun Yat-sen's widow and son, Song Qingling and Sun Ke, were given high posts with little power.
  • "Guangxi Generals," the radical anti-communists responsible for the Shanghai massacre in 1927 ; at the head Li Zongren , Li Jishen , Bai Chongxi . They were also in favor of greater provincial autonomy.
  • Ultra-conservative “Westberg Group” with its own party cell in Shanghai since December 1925, socio-politically conservative, from 1927 temporarily back in the right-wing mainstream, the supporters formed a counter-government in Beijing in May to October 1930 in the violent annihilation of around one hundred thousand people.

After the northern campaign , which led to nationwide dominance for almost three years - now the KMT was de facto a unity and state party - the dissatisfied groups around Wang Jingwei and Sun Ke , with the support of the Guangxi generals, split off in Canton one Formed government. This faction, which was also opposed by armed forces, joined the united front at the end of September 1931 after tough negotiations, which made sense after the incident at the Marco Polo Bridge . From 1937 onwards, the military wing around Chiang Kai-shek dominated, supported by the Soong clan, of which Premier TV Soong was an exponent, and Shanghai capital interests.

After retreating to Chongqing , the radical nationalists, supported by the Dai brothers' secret service apparatus, under the leadership of " Himmler China" Dai Li, gained control of the state and the party.

• Leading minds at KMT in the 1930s
• 

  Wang Jingwei (1930)

• 

  Wu Zhihui
  (before 1941)

• 

  Li Shizeng
  (around 1930)

• 

  TV Soong
  (ca.1935)

• 

  Tai Li (1940s)

• 

  Sun Ke (right) and Ling Bin

Fight against political opponents

see main article: Chinese Civil War

Chiang Kai-shek with flag of the Republic of China , (1945)

MG troops of the Kuomintang in the Second Sino-Japanese War

The CCP withdrew to the mountains of southern China's Jiangxi Province and founded the Chinese Soviet Republic there from 1929 to 1934 . Chiang Kai-shek tried during the so-called encirclement campaigns to defeat the communists, whereupon they were forced to flee and relocated to the north of Yan'an ( Shanxi province ), heroically transfigured as the Long March . Meanwhile, the KMT ruled dictatorially over parts of China it controlled. After the Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, Chiang Kai-shek had to concentrate his military forces on defending against the Japanese army and temporarily gave up the fight against the communists. Under pressure from the Soviet Union and his own troops, Chiang finally again formed an alliance with the Communist Party ( Second United Front ). In the early years of the Sino-Japanese War, the KMT-CCP ​​alliance proved viable. In early 1941, however, the civil war broke out again between the two parties. With the entry of the USA into World War II, the KMT received the recognition and support of the Allies as a ruling party . It wasn't until 1948 that the CCP recovered money and arms shipments from the Soviet Union on credit.

The KMT was de facto a unitary party in the state it ruled. Student protests in the capital and especially Kunming were suppressed by the henchmen Tai Li's and his brother with great brutality and numerous deaths. After the end of World War II, the civil war between the CCP and the KMT continued. In the meantime, the KMT had lost support in large parts of the population, which was due on the one hand to the hesitant action against the Japanese, on the other hand to the undisciplined behavior of the KMT soldiers , the pronounced corruption and the alleged orientation of the KMT to the interests of the big industrialists since Chiang Kai -shek's takeover was conditional. Kuomintang supporters, on the other hand, argue that the KMT-controlled army actually bore the brunt of the war against Japan and that the CP spared its forces and arms supplies for the revolution.

Expulsion from the mainland

When the new constitution came into force in 1946, the Chinese Communist Party spoke of its willingness to participate in the democratic construction of the country, but radicalized the Democratic League and did not participate in the elections for the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan in 1947 . Despite communist intimidation in some places, around 250 million eligible voters went to the polls. In this election, the Kuomintang became only the second force in the National Assembly after a large number of independent candidates. The Social Democrats and the Young China Party together got around ten percent of the seats. As a first measure, the National Assembly passed a law to combat the “communist rebellion”, which was in force until 1991 and which hindered democratic developments in Taiwan.

History since 1949

The Kuomintang party flag is still featured on the country's national flag today.

The borders of the Republic of China claimed by the Kuomintang; including today's Mongolia and parts of Russia.

After the communists Mao Zedong came to power and the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, millions of Kuomintang followers fled to the island and province of Taiwan, where they temporarily maintained their government and all other organs of the Republic of China. The members of parliament should represent all provinces of China in accordance with the right to sole representation. The provinces in which free elections were not possible should be represented by the last (more or less) freely elected MPs until free elections are possible again (" Long Parliament "). This construction led to the fact that until 1992 the Taiwanese could only re-elect the few MPs from the Taiwan Province . The vast majority of the parliamentary seats for the mainland provinces, however, were “frozen”, so to speak, and taken by the Kuomintang MPs, who were elected in the last all-China election in 1947 and who fled to Taiwan in 1949.

Legislative yuan election results
since 1992

Election year	voting share	Seats in parliament
1992	53.0%	95/161
1995	46.1%	85/164
1998	46.4%	123/225
2001	28.6%	68/225
2004	32.8%	114/225
2008	51.2%	82/113
2012	44.6%	67/113
2016	26.9%	35/113
2020	33.4%	38/113

Because of the martial law that was in force until 1987 and this electoral provision, Taiwan was de facto not a democracy but a one-party dictatorship of the Kuomintang. It established its followers - mainland Chinese immigrants - as an elite. These stood above the native Taiwanese. For example, the only official language was Mandarin Chinese , while the native languages ​​were suppressed. The tension led to the incident on February 28, 1947 , which led to clashes between the army and Taiwanese and massacres. A formal apology from the Kuomintang or its representatives has not yet been received. After the increasing economic transformation of the People's Republic of China according to capitalist principles and the later collapse of the Soviet Union , liberalization also took place in the Republic of China in the 1980 / 1990s. The 14th KMT congress in August 1993 decided on fundamental reforms, including the secret election of the party chairman and a clear reduction in his powers. The National Assembly was elected for the first time by all Taiwanese in general, free and equal elections, and direct election of the president was introduced in 1996. In addition to the Kuomintang, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which advocates Taiwan's independence (while the Kuomintang maintains the long-term goal of reunification of the two Chinese states through negotiations with the government in Beijing ), was allowed to run for the first time, and the government from 2000 to 2008 and presented the President.

In January 2008 the Kuomintang won a strong majority of 71.7% of the seats in the parliamentary elections . In March of the same year, her candidate Ma Ying-jeou was elected president. Ma, who took over the office of party chairman on October 17, 2009, has since pursued a policy of rapprochement with the People's Republic of China. In bilateral meetings with representatives of China, he has to refrain from addressing him as “President of the Republic of China” because the People's Republic does not recognize him as head of state. Despite losses, the Kuomintang was able to maintain its absolute majority in the legislative yuan in the 2012 elections with 56.6% of the seats, and its top candidate Ma was re-elected in the 2012 presidential election.

During Ma's second term in office, the Kuomintang suffered a steady decline in popularity, which led to significant defeats in the Taiwanese local elections in 2014, whereupon Ma Ying-jeou resigned from the position of party chairman on December 3. On the same day, the party's central committee appointed the previous deputy chairman Wu Den-yih as executive chairman. In the new election by the party base on January 17, 2015, the incumbent Mayor of New Taipei Eric Chu was elected as the new chairman.

On July 19, 2015, the KMT elected the 67-year-old deputy parliamentary speaker Hung Hsiu-chu as the top candidate of the KMT in the upcoming presidential election in 2016 at its party congress . But only a few months later, as a result of persistently poor polls and strong internal party criticism, Hung was deposed as a candidate for the Kuomintang on October 17, 2015 at a special party congress and replaced by party chairman Eric Chu. In the presidential election on January 16, 2016, Chu achieved 31.04% of the vote and had to admit defeat to Tsai Ing-wen , the candidate of the opposition party DPP (56.12%). That same evening, Chu announced his immediate resignation from the position of party chairman. In the required new election of the party chairmanship on March 26, 2016, Hung Hsiu-chu prevailed with 56.16% of the votes against the executive chairwoman Huang Hui-min (33.02%). In the rotating election of the party chairman on May 20, 2017, Wu Den-yih was elected by the party base as the new chairman with 52.24% of the votes and took office after the party congress on August 20, 2017. After the clear defeat of the Kuomintang in the presidential election and the election of the Legislative Yuan on January 11, 2020, Wu resigned as party chairman on January 15. The election of the new party leadership is scheduled for March 7th.

Kuomintang in Burma

→ Main article : Kuomintang in Burma

Some of the KMT troops defeated in Yunnan fled to Burma in 1949 , where they initially waged a guerrilla war with the support of the CIA , but then focused on controlling opium cultivation. The units were supported by the government in Taiwan until they officially disbanded in 1973. 80,000 Yunnan Chinese have been resettled as refugees in northern Thailand since 1962.

Others

Well-known KMT leaders were Sun Yat-sen , Chiang Kai-shek , Chiang Ching-kuo , Lee Teng-hui , Lien Chan and Ma Ying-Jeou .

A small group of left-wing party members around Sun Yat-sen's widow Song Qingling split off as the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee in 1948 , stayed on mainland China and worked with the Chinese Communist Party.

Web links

• The official website of the Kuomintang
• Andrea Kath: 08/25/1912 - Sun Yat-sen founds the National Party - Kuomintang WDR ZeitZeichen (podcast).
• China's neglected republic

literature

• Domes, Jürgen; Kuomintang rule in China; Hanover 1970.
• Thomas Weyrauch: China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history. Volume 1: 1911-1949 . Longtai 2009, ISBN 978-3-938946-14-5 .
• Thomas Weyrauch: China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history. Volume 2: 1950-2011 . Longtai 2011, ISBN 978-3-938946-15-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 國民黨 澄清 外界 對 「黨員 人數」 與 「投票 率」 誤解"Correction of the Kuomintang regarding the misunderstandings in the public about 'membership' and 'voter turnout' (chin.), Official website of the KMT, January 18, 2015
2. ^ News from the Liberty Times dated January 4, 2015
3. ^ Dictionary.reference.com
4. ^ Website of the Kuomintang: History. Archived from the original on July 4, 2015 ; accessed on April 9, 2020 .  , accessed on August 25, 2009
5. ↑ annalen.net of July 15, accessed on July 14, 2009; Jung Chang, Jon Halliday: Mao, p. 68; Weyrauch: China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history. Vol. 1, p. 127 f.
6. ↑ Entire section after Domes (1970), p. 22-
7. ↑ ^{a b} Detailed in: Melby, John F .; Mandates of Heaven; London 1969 (Chatto & Windus)
8. ↑ Weyrauch; China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history; Vol. 1, p. 244
9. ↑ Weyrauch; China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history; Vol. 1, p. 287 ff.
10. ↑ Weyrauch; China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history; P. 293 ff.
11. ↑ Michael Richardson: “Ma Ying-jeou blames 'victimization complex' for Taiwan's economic downturn in video conference”. Archived from the original on September 17, 2009 ; accessed on April 9, 2020 .  , May 12, 2009, examiner.com
12. ^ Encyclopedia of the Nations >> Asia and Oceania >> Taiwan: Taiwan - Political parties. 2012, accessed December 27, 2012 . 
13. ↑ "Ma Ying-jeou wants peace with China" , Der Tagesspiegel , March 23, 2008
14. ↑ Dr. William Fang: "Taiwan's' Mr. Ma 'to China's' Chairman Hu' " , The China Post , October 13, 2008 (English)
15. ↑ Focus Taiwan , December 3, 2014
16. ↑ KMT elects Eric Chu as chairman , Taipei Times, January 18, 2015
17. ^ Taiwan election: KMT nomination sets up battle of women. BBC News, July 19, 2015, accessed July 20, 2015 . 
18. ↑ http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2015/10/17/448592/Hung-forced.htm Hung 'forced' to accept KMT's decision to replace her , The China Post, 17th October 2015
19. ^ Website of the Central Election Committee
20. ↑ KMT's head Eric Chu, deputy head Hau Lung-bin step down , Focus Taiwan, January 16, 2016
21. ^ Victorius Hung Hsiu-chu vows to work for KMT's rebirth , Focus Taiwan, March 26, 2016
22. ↑ Wu Den-yih wins KMT chairman election , Focus Taiwan, May 20, 2017
23. ^ Taiwan ex-Vice President Wu Den-yih elected KMT leader in first round , Taiwan News, May 20, 2017
24. ↑ Yu Hsiang, Yeh Chen, Chiang Yi-ching: KMT chairman resigns amid heated calls for party reform. Focus Taiwan, January 15, 2020, accessed on January 16, 2020 (English). 
25. ↑ Wen-chin Chang; From War Refugees to Immigrants. The Case of the KMT Yunnanese Chinese in Northern Thailand ; Intl. Migration Review, Vol 35 (2001), pp. 1086-1105