Chinese Civil War

Between 1931 and 1945 the Republic of China (ROC or KMT) was engaged at the same time in two separate wars. One was with Japan and the other with the Comintern. The Soviet Union fought the Republic of China with an army of Chinese revolutionaries, the CCP, directed and armed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's ambitions in China were to transform all northern China — Sinkiang, Mongolia and Manchuria — into Soviet dependencies and to convert what remained of China into a Communist satellite state.

The Chinese Civil War was continued in 1945 after the defeat of Japan between the People's Liberation Army of the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong and the Kuomintang (KMT) forces led by Chiang Kai-shek. The Communists emerged victorious, and Mao declared the People's Republic of China's founding in Beijing on October 1, 1949. The Nationalists retreated to the island province of Taiwan and claimed that as the Republic of China they were the true government of China, a difference in viewpoint that still remains unresolved today.