ROC Government in Exile

After four years of civil war, Chiang and the nationalists were forced to flee to the island of Taiwan. There they established a government-in-exile and dreamed of retaking the mainland.

SOURCE: TIME magazine
Article: Chiang Kai-shek China's Christian Warrior

In August of 1949, the Truman administration published the "China White Paper," which explained past US policy toward China based upon the principle that only Chinese forces could determine the outcome of their civil war ...... The unfinished nature of the revolution, leaving a broken and exiled but still vocal Nationalist Government and army on Taiwan, only heightened the sense among US anti-communists that the outcome of the struggle could be reversed.

SOURCE: US Department of State
Article: The Chinese Revolution of 1949

... after Dr. Sun's death in 1925, Chiang took over Kuomintang, subdued feudal warlords, and became ruler of mainland China from 1928 to 1949, when the Chinese Communists won the civil war. Chiang, together with the remaining Nationalist forces, moved to the island of Taiwan (Formosa), where he set up a government-in-exile.

SOURCE: Duke University Libraries
Article: Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek

As the Communist forces headed for victory, Chiang began to shift troops and gold reserves to the island of Taiwan, 100 miles off the Chinese mainland. Two months after the inauguration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing on October 1, 1949, Chiang and the Nationalists installed the rival Republic of China (ROC) as a government in exile on Taiwan.

SOURCE: Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
Article: Establishment of the People's Republic of China

(born October 31, 1887, Chekiang province, China -- died April 5, 1975, Taipei, Taiwan) soldier and statesman, head of the Nationalist government in China from 1928 to 1949, and subsequently head of the Chinese Nationalist government in exile on Taiwan.

SOURCE: BIOGRAPHY.com
Article: Jiang Jieshi Biography

In 1946, civil war broke out between the KMT and the Communists. In 1949, the Communists were victorious, establishing the People's Republic of China. Chiang and the remaining KMT forces fled to the island of Taiwan. There Chiang established a government in exile which he led for the next 25 years.

SOURCE: BBC
Article: Historic Figures Chiang Kai-shek

One of the most visible features of Nationalist rule on Taiwan throughout the period of martial law (1948 - 87) was the promotion of a personality cult focused on the figure of Chiang Kai-shek. This article is an examination of the ways in which the disparate elements which made up this cult were produced. It considers how the cult reflected a political culture which originated in the Nanjing decade and the subsequent war years, yet which adapted to the realities of post-war exile in Taiwan.

SOURCE: Cambridge Journals, The China Quarterly (2006)
Article: The Production of the Chiang Kai-shek Personality Cult

The real issue is the Chinese civil war. In 1949, the Chinese Communists under Mao Tse-tung defeated the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek, driving them into exile on Taiwan.

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
Article: Perspectives on China Don't Let Taiwan Force a Confrontation

Madame Chiang, a dazzling and imperious politician, wielded immense influence in Nationalist China, but she and her husband were eventually forced by the Communist victory into exile in Taiwan, where she presided as the grande dame of Nationalist politics for many years.

SOURCE: New York Times
Article: Madame Chiang Kai-shek Dies at 105

In his new biography, Mr. Taylor has taken up a more formidable task, writing on a well-known figure whose influence must be delineated from the enormously complicated events of modern China's history, spanning the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the founding of the Republic of China, World War II and the Nationalist exile on Taiwan.

SOURCE: Far Eastern Economic Review
Book: The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek

In 1949, Mao Zedong's communist forces conquered mainland China. The defeated Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, where they ruled with an iron fist as a government-in-exile.

SOURCE: Formosa Betrayed
Article: New movie ties Taiwan's messy politics

In 1949, after Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party lost its power struggle with the Communist Party in China, Chiang and his followers fled to Taiwan. Their Kuomintang (KMT) government-in-exile in Taipei defined itself as the alternative to Communist rule and hoped one day to return to power in Beijing.

SOURCE: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center NEWS
Article: China-Taiwan Relations

For the first time, the thoughts and feelings of Chiang Kai-shek, the controversial and private leader of China who later was exiled to Taiwan, will be put on public display.

The diaries of Chiang and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, will reside at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University for the next 50 years.

SOURCE: Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Article: Diaries of Chiang Kai-shek to go on display

Taiwan's vast collection of Chinese artefacts has long been a bone of contention ...... The National Palace Museum in Taipei holds more than 655,000 such articles, most of which were removed from Beijing in the 1930s by the exiled Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, .....

SOURCE: Telegraph.co.uk
Article: Taiwan and China at loggerheads

Part 1 of this series covers the crucial year of 1949, which witnessed the final triumph of the Communist forces, the exile of the Nationalists to Formosa/Taiwan, and the official establishment of the People's Republic of China.

SOURCE: (UK) Foreign Office Files for China, 1949-1976
Article: Complete Files for 1949

1949: Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists lose civil war to Mao Zedong's Communist forces, sets up government-in-exile on Taiwan

SOURCE: Reuters
TIMELINE: Milestones in China-Taiwan relations since 1949

In 1949 the KMT forces lost to the CCP, and Chiang's Nationalist government was compelled to seek exile on the island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa.

SOURCE: Encyclopedia of World Biography
Article: Chiang Ching-kuo

... this is the story of the founding of modern China, starting with a revolution that swept away more than 2,000 years of monarchy, followed by World War II, and ending in the eventual loss to the Communists and exile in Taiwan.

SOURCE: Amazon.com and www.chinajzl.org
Book: The Last Empress: Madame CKS and the Birth of Modern China

However, after the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, there was no further need for the party to behave as though it was still an insurrectionary force. The PLA should at that time have been transformed into the state's military arm.

Instead, the party kept it on as its private army, as though it was somehow in danger of losing control of the country to the defeated forces of Chiang Kai-shek in exile on Taiwan.

SOURCE: Frank Ching in the Korea Times
Article: China's 60th Anniversary

After a 60-year diplomatic freeze, the chairman of the nationalist Chinese party of Taiwan has arrived in China ..... During the visit, the delegation composed of 16 nationalist leaders will visit Nanjing, Beijing, and Shanghai. The decision to land in the old Chinese capital was interpreted as a gesture of homage to the last nationalist government of China, which had its capital in Nanjing. That government -- headed by Generalissimo Chang Kai-shek -- was defeated and exiled by the Red Army of Mao Zedong in 1949.

SOURCE: AsiaNews.it
Article: Visit of nationalist leader begins, new era of relations with Beijing

The Chiangs' long exile on Taiwan after the 1949 communist victory did not discourage all of their U.S. church friends .....

SOURCE: The American Spectator
Article: Methodist Madame