ABSTRACT
Following China’s 1911 Revolution, the Chinese military broke up into a number of private armies under regional warlords; meanwhile, China’s navy was disunited and weak. In South China, one of the regional powers was the Nationalist—Guomindang—party. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nationalist navy was small, poorly organized, and was destined to play only a minor role in China’s defense against Japan during the 1930s; soon after Japan invaded China in 1937, the bulk of the Chinese navy was either destroyed or fell into Japanese hands. After the end of World War II, the Nationalists were forced to start from scratch in their efforts to recreate a national navy.
