The Kuomintang (KMT), also called the Guomindang (GMD) or the Nationalist Party of China (NPC), is a conservative political party in Taiwan. It was founded in 1912 by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat-sen as the "Nationalist Party", and it was the successor of the Chinese nationalist Tongmenghui revolutionary society, which overthrew Qing rule in 1911. The Kuomintang was originally divided between a pro-Soviet and socialist left-wing under Sun Yat-sen and an anti-communist right-wing under Chiang Kai-shek, and the right wing ultimately prevailed during the Chinese Civil War, with the left-wing being purged and forming the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang. From 1928 to 2000, the Kuomintang was the sole ruling party of the Republic of China, with Chiang Kai-shek ending the warlord era by unifying the country under Nationalist rule in 1928. In 1949, after losing the Chinese Civil War to the rival Communist Party of China, the Nationalist government was forced to flee to Taiwan, where the Republic of China established its new capital at Taipei. Chiang Kai-shek presided over a military dictatorship which massacred or imprisoned thousands of suspected communist sympathizers, and Taiwan was a single-party state until 1986. During the 1990s, political reforms in the country loosened the KMT's grip on power, and the party also moderated its views. The Kuomintang held to the one-China policy and supported eventual unification with the mainland, but it was forced to support the political and legal status quo of Taiwan due to the unlikely prospect of reunification. The Kuomintang continued to be one of Taiwan's main political parties, opposing the Democratic Progressive Party.
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