China (Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum)

China is an area in East Asia which extends approximately 9.6 million square kilometres (3.7 million square miles). After the Republic foundation in 1912, this area fragmented by several antagonistic government. Since 1949, the northern half has been occupied by the People's Republic of China, while the southern half has been occupied by the Republic of China.

On January 1, 1912, Sun officially declared the establishment of the Republic of China and put an end to over two thousand years of Imperial rule. He was inaugurated in Nanjing as the first Provisional President. But power in Beijing already had passed to Yuan Shikai, who had effective control of the Beiyang Army, the most powerful military force in China at the time. To prevent civil war and possible foreign intervention from undermining the infant republic, Sun agreed to Yuan's demand that China be united under a Beijing government headed by Yuan. On March 10, in Beijing, Yuan Shikai was sworn in as the second Provisional President of the Republic of China.

Although there were many political parties each vying for supremacy in the legislature, the revolutionists lacked an army, and the power of Yuan Shikai began to outstrip that of parliament. Yuan revised the constitution at will and became dictatorial. In August 1912, the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) was founded by Song Jiaoren, one of Sun's associates. It was an amalgamation of small political groups, including Sun's Tongmenghui. In the national elections held in February 1913 for the new bicameral parliament, Song campaigned against the Yuan administration, whose representation at the time was largely by the Republican Party, led by Liang Qichao. Song was an able campaigner and the Kuomintang won a majority of seats. But Song later assassinated in March with Yuan under suspicion.

After Yuan Shikai's death, shifting alliances of regional warlords fought for control of the Beijing government. Despite the fact that various warlords gained control of the government in Beijing during the warlord era, this did not constitute a new era of control or governance, because other warlords did not acknowledge the transitory governments in this period and were a law unto themselves. These military-dominated governments were known as the Beiyang Government

In September 1917, Sun Yat-sen and the deposed parliament members to establish a new government in Guangzhou and the Constitutional Protection Army to counter Beijing Government Army. Sun had become commander-in-chief of a rival military government in Canton in collaboration with southern warlords. In October 1919, Sun reestablished the Kuomintang (KMT) to counter the government in Beijing. The latter, under a succession of warlords, still maintained its facade of legitimacy and its relations with the West.

On December 29, 1928, Zhang Xueliang announced the replacement of all flags in Manchuria and accepted the jurisdiction of the Nationalist Government. Two days later, the Nationalist Government appointed Zhang as the commander of the Northeast Army. The Nanjing government received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China.

In early 1927, the Kuomintang-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CCP and the left wing of the Kuomintang had decided to move the seat of the Nationalist government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. But Chiang, whose Northern Expedition was proving successful, set his forces to destroying the Shanghai CCP apparatus and established an anti-Communist government at Nanjing in April 1927. This conflict later escalated into the resumption of the First Chinese Civil War.

In 1931, the anti-Chiang faction led by Hu Hanmin in the KMT converged on Guangzhou to set up a rival government with the help of Chen Jitang and the New Guangxi clique. Nanjing Government keep tried to destroys the independent southern government until the Second World War when both governments cooperated to against Japan and the Guangzhou government eventually dissolved in 1940.

The Kuomintang and the Communists also formed the Second United Front in 1939 in the joint resistance to Japan, but the conflict between them keep occured. In 1945, the Republic of China emerged from the war nominally a great military power but actually a nation economically prostrate and on the verge of all-out civil war. The economy deteriorated, sapped by the military demands of foreign war and internal strife, by spiraling inflation, and by Nationalist profiteering, speculation, and hoarding. Starvation came in the wake of the war, and millions were rendered homeless by floods and the unsettled conditions in many parts of the country.

The more wider Civil War emerged between the Kuomintang and the Gongchangdang. In January 1949, Beiping was taken by the Communists without a fight, and its name changed back to Beijing. Between April and November, major cities in the Northern and the Central China passed from Kuomintang to Communist control with minimal resistance. In most cases, the surrounding countryside and small towns had come under Communist influence long before the cities. Finally, on 1 October 1949, Communists founded the People's Republic of China with Mao Zedong as its Chairman.

The Kuomintang Government withstanding in the ten southern provinces of China, although there remained only isolated pockets of resistance. On 7 December 1949, Chiang Kai Shek proclaimed Haikou, Hainan, the capital of the Republic of China.

With the help from Japanese Republican government, both governments agreed to ceasefire in 1953 and ended the First Chinese Civil War. But, when Mao Zedong introduced the Cultural Revolution, the Second Chinese Civil War emerged from 1969 to 1976. After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping and more open-minded party leaders agreed to seek an armistice with the South and both governments recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate governments for China

Today, since the introduction of market-based economic reforms in 1978, People’s Republic of China has become the world's fastest-growing major economy. As of 2012, it is the world's second-largest economy, after the United States, by both nominal GDP and purchasing power parity (PPP), and is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. On per capita terms, PRC ranked 90th by nominal GDP and 91st by GDP (PPP) in 2011, according to the IMF. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army, with the second-largest defense budget. In 2003, PRC became the third nation in the world, after the former Soviet Union and the United States, to independently launch a successful manned space mission. PRC has been characterized as a potential superpower by a number of academics, military analysts, and public policy and economics analysts

While at the southern, the Republic of China is a multi-party democracy that has a presidential system and universal suffrage. It experienced rapid economic growth, industrialization, and democratization during the latter half of the twentieth century. The ROC now is an industrialized advanced economy. It is one of the Four Asian Tigers and a member of the WTO and APEC. The 19th-largest economy in the world, its advanced technology industry plays a key role in the global economy. The ROC is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, and human development.