Chinese Civil War

On April 1927 a civil war was started in china. Between the republic of china lead by the Kuomintang and the newly established Chinese Communist party. The war started after the Northern Expedition, which was a battle against the warlord's forces. In this battle the Republic joined forces with the Communist party and the Soviet arms. When the battle with the warlord was over the nationalists turned and attacked Britain, seeing them as their biggest threat. When the British retreated to Shanghai the Communist units went into capture it in the name of Chiang Kai-Shek their leader. This action ended the alliance between the Republic and Communists and started the Civil War. The war went on till 1937 when the Japanese invaded. At first the Communist leader Chiang Kai-Slek refused to join with the Republic to fight the Japanese. Then the Kuomintang generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng kidnapped Chiang Kai-Shek and forced him to sign a truce so that they could join forces to defeat the Japanese invaders. This was known as the Xi'an Incident. In the late 1940's the United States supplied the Nationalists with hundreds of millions of dollars of military equipment. On the other side the Chinese Communists were being funded by the Soviet Union. The war ended in 1950 with the Communists winning forcing the Nationalists to retreat to the island of Taiwan. During the take over the Republics capital of Beiping was renamed Beijing and renamed Taipei, Taiwan.