📅 12 April 1927
Chiang Kai-shek’s forces and allied groups violently suppressed Communist and labor organizations in Shanghai. The purge ended the first United Front and drove the Chinese Communist Party toward armed...
📅 12 December 1936
Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng detained Chiang Kai-shek to press him to prioritize resistance to Japan. The crisis led to renewed cooperation between Nationalists and Communists, although...
📅 15 August 1945
Japan announced it would accept the Allied surrender terms, ending the Pacific War. In China, the end of Japanese occupation opened a struggle over political authority and control of territory;...
📅 26 June 1946
Fighting between Nationalist and Communist forces escalated after the fragile postwar truce collapsed. The civil war determined who would govern mainland China and shaped the geopolitical division...
📅 2 November 1948
The Communist victory in northeast China gave its forces control of Manchuria’s industrial base and a large arsenal. It shifted the civil-war balance decisively and laid material foundations for the...
📅 23 August 1958
The PRC began shelling the Kinmen islands, escalating a confrontation with the Republic of China and the United States. The crisis reinforced the militarized division across the Strait and underscored...
📅 12 April 1927
Kuomintang forces under Chiang Kai-shek attacked Communists and labor activists in Shanghai, ending the alliance that had structured the first united front. Soviet and Comintern policy had sought to...
📅 12 April 1927
Chiang Kai-shek's forces and allied armed groups attacked Communist and labor organizations in Shanghai. The purge, remembered as the April 12 Incident or Shanghai Massacre, expanded into...
📅 7 July 1937
A military clash near Beiping (Beijing) escalated after Japanese and Chinese forces mobilized. The incident became the opening of full-scale Sino-Japanese War, following years of Japanese encroachment...
📅 17 July 1945
The United States, Britain, and China issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan’s surrender and setting out terms for postwar occupation and disarmament. The Soviet Union joined the declaration...
