Republic of China Armed Forces

The Republic of China Armed Forces are the national military of the Republic of China, which is now based mainly on Taiwan and its surrounding islands but governed mainland China until 1949. They comprise the Army, the Navy including the Marine Corps, the Air Force and the Military Police, under the civilian Ministry of National Defense. The force descends from the National Revolutionary Army, founded by Sun Yat-sen in Guangdong in 1924 with Soviet help and trained through the Whampoa Military Academy; it took its present name in 1947 when the new constitution came into force. As the National Revolutionary Army it fought the Northern Expedition, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, after which it withdrew to Taiwan. For decades its mission was to retake the mainland, and it received heavy United States support after the Korean War; the focus later shifted to the defence of Taiwan, with an active strength of about 150,000 and a large reserve.