Communism was especially appealing to the Chinese because it was associated with opposition to Western imperialism.
In 1926 the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-Shek, ousted the Chinese warlords and established its own government. By 1928 it controlled the entire country and undertook a reform programme. The years from 1928 to 1937 are known as the Nationalist era in Chinese history. Chiang had received his military training in Moscow and the Communists were initially his allies, but he later decided to purge them from his government. In 1934-1935 the Communists undertook the Long March to Shaanxi Province, where they established a base. Two years later, Japan invaded China forcing the Kuomintang and the Communists into an uneasy alliance. At the end of the war against Japan in 1945 the alliance collapsed into civil war. Mao had carefully nurtured his support among the nation's peasants, believing that if he could control the countryside, the cities too would fall into his hands. "The people are like water", he said, "and the army is like fish". By 1949 he controlled China, except for Taiwan, which became the last Nationalist stronghold.
For two decades the Nationalists were the only government recognized by the United States and the United Nations. But Communist China was admitted to the United Nations in 1971, and in 1972 US President Richard Nixon visited China, beginning the normalization of Chinese-American relations. Since 1949 the Chinese Communists have alternated between periods of openness and periods of repression, ebb and flow that also occurred under the dynasties of the past.
On June 3 and 4, 1989, the Chinese People's Liberation Army brutally suppressed a prodemocracy demonstration in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing several hundred people. Students and workers demonstrating against Communist rule in China had occupied Tiananmen Square and other locations. When the demonstrations continued despite government condemnation, troops began to assemble around the square and, on the morning of June 4, moved into the square and opened fire.