Education in china

Establishment of the Republic and World War II 
Main article: Republic of China (1912–1949) 
Further information: 1911 Revolution, Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil 
War, and Chinese Communist Revolution 
Sun Yat-sen, key figure of the Republic of China's 
establishment 
On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of 
the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional 
president.
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 On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed 
the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last emperor of 
China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency 
was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed 

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himself Emperor of China. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition 
from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the 
republic in 1916.
After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-
based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional 
warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang 
under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military 
Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of 
deft military and political maneuverings, known collectively as the Northern 
Expedition. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and 
implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development 
outlined in Sun Yat-sen's San-min program for transforming China into a modern 
democratic state. The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to 
battle the communist-led People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the
Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong toasting together in 1945 following the end of 
World War II