Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT) was the governing party in China from 1911 and into World War II. It was formed during the 1911 revolution from an alliance of Nationalist warlords led by Sun Yat Sen. They overthrew the boy Emperor Pu Yi and took charge of China.
Chiang Kai-shek later took control of the Kuomintang and set his efforts on containing the growing Communist movement filtering into China from the USSR in the north. Numerous expeditions launched by Chiang successfully drove the Communists into the mountainous regions of north and central China. Du Yue Sheng, who was a general during these expeditions, was made Minister of Opium Suppression as a reward for his services.
Despite its Nationalist ideology, the Kuomintang sought alliances with Western powers and so the government allowed them to police the International Settlement in Shanghai with their own troops. Sung-Chi Li disapproved of the policy as it meant there was a greater chance that criminals could haggle their way out of arrest, and not be handed over to the authority of the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang issued Browning Hi-Power firearms to its own security forces.
In the 1930s, the Kuomintang also had to confront the aggression of Japan and her Empire, from the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, to the crisis in Shanghai in 1932, and the incident at Marco Polo Bridge in 1937 which sparked war between the two nations, beginning World War II in Asia. (PROSE: The Shadow of Weng-Chiang)
