The Republic of China (Traditional Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó; Manchu: Dulimbai irgen gurun) succeeded the Qing Dynasty in 1912, ending 2,000 years of imperial rule. Since its founding, the republic experienced many tribulations as it was dominated by numerous warlords and fragmented by foreign powers. In 1928 the republic was nominally unified under the Kuomintang (KMT), and was in the early stages of industrialization and modernization when it was caught in the conflicts between the Kuomintang government, the [[Chinese Communist Party], remnant warlords, and Japan. Most nation-building efforts were stopped during the full-scale war of resistance against Japan from 1937 to 1945, and later the widening gap between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party made a coalition government impossible, causing the resumption of the Chinese Civil War.

A series of political, economic, and military missteps led the Kuomintang to defeat and retreat to Taiwan in 1949, establishing an authoritarian one-party state that declared itself to be the sole legitimate ruler of all of China. However, since political liberalization begun in the late 1970s, the Republic of China has transformed itself into a localized, multiparty, representative democracy