Editing Long March (section)

=== Civil War ===
{{Main|Chinese Civil War}}

The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 by [[Chen Duxiu]] with Soviet support. The CCP initially collaborated with the nationalist Kuomintang, founded by the revolutionary republican [[Sun Yat-sen]]. However, after the unexpected death of Sun in March 1925, a power struggle within the KMT led to the shift in the party's authority to Chiang Kai-shek, whose [[Northern Expedition (1926–1927)|Northern Expedition]] forces succeeded in wresting control of large areas of China from local [[Warlord Era|warlords]] and establishing a unified government in [[Nanjing]] in April 1927. Unlike other nationalist leaders, like [[Wang Jingwei]], Chiang was opposed to the idea of continued collaboration with the CCP. The initial period of cooperation to unify China and end the [[Unequal treaty|unequal treaties]] broke up in April 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek [[April 12 Incident|struck out against the Communists]]. Unsuccessful urban insurrections (in [[Nanchang Uprising|Nanchang]], [[Wuhan]] and [[Guangzhou]]) and the suppression of the CCP in Shanghai and other cities drove many party supporters to rural strongholds such as the Jiangxi Soviet, which was organized by Mao Zedong. By 1928, deserters and defecting Kuomintang army units, supplemented by peasants from the Communist rural soviets, formed the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The ideological confrontation between the CCP and the KMT soon evolved into the first phase of the Chinese Civil War.