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The two main groups were the Chinese communists, led by Mao Tse Dung, and the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai Shek. The nationalists were the group recognized by the west as the "legitimate" government of China, and the group which had been allied against Japan and Germany during WWII. They were the successors to the Kuomintang nationalist movement from earlier in the century. But the nationalists never really controlled all of China and in truth Chiang was ony the largest and most successful of a number of different "warlords". There is a "dynastic cycle" in the long history of China, and whenever the central government grows weak its authority ceases to reach all far flung corners of the land, and warlords spring up to challenge for control of those areas. Eventually one of these warlords becomes powerful enough to displace the old dynasty, and establish a new dynasty. This is essentially what happened in 1949 when the communists won the civil war, and became the strongest government since the decline of the last Imperial dynasty forty years earlier.

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12y ago

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