National Revolutionary Army

The National Revolutionary Army was the armed wing of the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, from 1924 until 1947. It grew out of the Cantonese forces that backed Sun Yat-sen and was reorganized with Soviet help into a party army meant to unify China under Nationalist rule, a goal pursued first through the Northern Expedition against the northern warlords. After the Nationalists reunified China nominally in 1928 it served as the de facto armed forces of the Republic of China, fighting in the Chinese Civil War and in the Second Sino-Japanese War, where it bore the main weight of China's resistance to Japan. Many of its officers trained at the Whampoa Military Academy, whose first commandant, Chiang Kai-shek, became its commander in chief. Its strength rested on the central government forces plus regional armies that were only nominally under central command. With the 1947 constitution it was reorganized into the Republic of China Armed Forces.