History of the People's Republic of China

After its victory in the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China (CCP) led by Mao Zedong gained control of most of Mainland China. On 1 October 1949, they established the People's Republic of China as a Socialist State headed by a "Democratic Dictatorship" with the CCP as the only legal political party, thus, laying claim as the successor state of the ROC. The central government of the Chinese Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek retreated to the island of Taiwan that it had administered at the end of World War II, and moved the ROC government there. Major armed hostilities ceased in 1950 but no peace treaty has been signed. An estimated 36 million died during the Great Chinese Famine of 1958–61.[39][40]

Beginning in the late 1970s, the Republic of China began the implementation of full, multi-party, representative democracy in the territories still under its control (Taiwan, and a number of smaller islands including Quemoy and Matsu). Today, the ROC has active political participation by all sectors of society. The main cleavage in ROC politics is the issue of eventual political unification with the Chinese mainland vs. formal independence of Taiwan

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