Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China ( or ;KMT, or Guomindang () and GMD by its Pinyin transliteration, also translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party) is the current ruling political party in Republic of China. Following losses in the presidential and legislative elections of 2016, the party will become the official opposition.
The predecessor of the KMT, the Revolutionary Alliance, was one of the major advocates of the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of a republic. The KMT was founded by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat-sen shortly after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. Sun was the provisional president but he did not have military power and ceded the first presidency to the military leader Yuan Shikai. After Yuan's death, China was divided by warlords, while the KMT was able to control only part of the south. Later led by Chiang Kai-shek, the KMT formed the National Revolutionary Army and succeeded in its Northern Expedition to unify much of China in 1928. It was the ruling party in mainland China from 1928 until its retreat to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated by the Communist Party of China (CPC) during the Chinese Civil War. In Taiwan, the KMT continued as the single ruling party until the reforms in the late 1970s through the 1990s loosened its grip on power. Since 1987, the Republic of China is no longer a single-party state; however, the KMT remains one of the main political parties, controlling the Legislative Yuan (Parliament) and most of the councils.
