The Wuchang Uprising was the Chinese uprising that served as the catalyst to the Xinhai Revolution, ending the Qing Dynasty -- and two millennia of imperial rule -- and ushering in the Republic of China (ROC). It began with the dissatisfaction of the handling of a railway crisis. The crisis then escalated to an uprising where the revolutionaries went up against Qing government officials. The uprising was then assisted by the New Army in a coup against their own authorities in the city of Wuchang, Hubei province on October 10, 1911. The Battle of Yangxia led by Huang Xing would be the major engagement in the uprising.
The Battle of Yangxia also known as the Defense of Yangxia was fought from October 18 to December 1, 1911 between the revolutionaries of the Wuchang Uprising and the loyalist armies of the Qing Dynasty. The battle was the largest military engagement of the Xinhai Revolution and was waged in Hankou and Hanyang, which along with Wuchang collectively form the tri-cities of Wuhan in central China. Though outnumbered by the Qing armies and possessing inferior weaponry, the revolutionaries fought valiantly in defense of Hankou and Hanyang. After heavy and bloody fighting, the stronger loyalist forces eventually prevailed in taking both Hankou and Hanyang, but the 41 days of resistance by the Revolutionary Army gave time for the revolution's political movement to form and other provinces to join the revolution against the Qing Dynasty. Hostilities ceased on December 1, after the commander-in-chief of the Qing forces, Yuan Shikai, agreed to a ceasefire and sent envoy to peace talks with the revolutionaries. Political negotiations eventually led to the abdication of the Last Emperor, the end of the Qing Dynasty and the formation of a unity government for the newly-established Republic of China.
A republic was formally established on 1 January 1912 following the Xinhai Revolution, which itself began with the Wuchang Uprising on 10 October 1911, replacing the Qing Dynasty and ending over two thousand years of imperial rule in China. From its founding until 1949 it was based on mainland China. Central authority waxed and waned in response to warlordism (1915–28), Japanese invasion (1937–45), and the Chinese Civil War (1927–49), with central authority strongest during the Nanjing Decade (1927–37), when most of China came under the control of the Kuomintang (KMT) under an authoritarian single-party state.At the end of World War II in 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered control of Taiwan and its island groups to the Allied Forces, and Taiwan was placed under the Republic of China's administrative control. The legitimacy of this transfer is disputed and is another aspect of the disputed political status of Taiwan.
The communist takeover of mainland China in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and later Hainan, Tachen and other outlying islands in the early 1950s left the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) with control over only Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands. With the 1949 loss of mainland China in the civil war, the ROC government retreated to Taiwan and the KMT declared Taipei the provisional capital. The Communist Party of China took over all of mainland Chinaand founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing, which claimed to be the successor of the Republic of China and the sole legitimate government of all of "China" – a claim also nominally made by the Republic of China government which still rules from Taipei to this day, although it no longer actively challenges PRC's rule of mainland China.
