The Republic of China came to life in early 1912 following the implosion of the Qing dynasty. However, in the absence of an effective central power, provincial warlords continued to run China while foreign powers looked on as Republicans led by Sun Yat-sen tried hold China together. Things changed in the early 1920s. Thanks to Soviet assistance, Chinese communists and nationalists (Guomindang, GMD) created a united front to defeat the warlords. However, when the defeat of the warlords became imminent in early 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the GMD and the army, turned violently on the Chinese communists and drove them out of the cities and into the countryside in a bloody civil war. In 1928, he took power, established his capital in Nanjing, and ruled the Republic of China with an iron fist. He also dedicated himself to destroying the communists. In 1934, he forced his adversaries on a perilous Long March taking them from southern China to the remote area of Yan’an in the north a year later. However, the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 forced Chiang Kai-shek to renew his collaboration with the communists against the foreign invader. The Americans threw their support behind Chiang Kai-shek, himself forced by the bloody Japanese occupation of Nanjing to set up his wartime capital in Chongqing. Following the Japanese defeat, the United States pressed Chinese nationalists and communists to build a coalition government. Their differences were too great and civil war resumed in 1946.
Meanwhile, in accordance with the decision taken at the Potsdam conference, the Republic of China dispatched troops into Indochina above the 16th parallel to accept the Japanese surrender there. Chiang Kai-shek appointed the Yunnanese general, Lu Han, to command the occupation forces, which peaked in late 1945 at about 100,000 troops (attended to by some 10,000 porters, stragglers, and petty merchants). While nationalist China was hardly sympathetic to communism, southern Chinese leaders sent to Indochina knew Vietnam and several of its nationalist leaders, including Ho Chi Minh. They were reluctant to overthrow the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), preferring stability that would allow them to concentrate on their own mission and interests. This is also why the Chinese commanders were in no rush to see the French return to the north, especially if it meant setting off a destabilizing Franco-Vietnamese war as had occurred under the British in the south on 23 September 1945. Chinese troops thus remained in northern Indochina while the central government negotiated the end of French concessions and privileges in China in exchange for an eventual Chinese troop withdrawal from northern Indochina.
On 28 February 1946, the signing of the Franco-Chinese Accords allowed for France to assume responsibility for the occupation of Indochina above the 16th parallel before the end of March. With civil war reigniting in northern China, Chiang Kai-shek needed to move his troops from Indochina towards Manchuria. However, when the French tried to force the Chinese hand by debarking troops at Haiphong as early as 6 March, local Chinese forces repulsed them by force, insisting that a Franco-Vietnamese agreement should first be reached. Again, local Chinese authorities had no desire to get bogged down in a colonial war. Under intense Chinese pressure, the French and the Vietnamese signed the Accords of 6 March 1946 in Hanoi. French troops landed safely thereafter in Haiphong and marched into Hanoi on the 18th but could not immediately overthrow the DRV government based in Hanoi. In June, the Chinese pulled the bulk of their troops out of Indochina and on 18 September 1946 the last remaining Chinese contingent left Haiphong.
While Chiang Kai-shek remained sympathetic to the Vietnamese nationalist cause, his attention was more focused on the Chinese communists and this increasingly meant maintaining acceptable relations with the French. This was even more the case following the Chinese communist victory on the mainland in 1949 and the transfer of the Republic of China to Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek’s government now supported the French-backed Associated States of Indochina and dispatched diplomats there to tend to the thousands of Chinese nationalist troops held in refugee camps in Indochina following their defeat by the Chinese communists in 1949–50. See also REFUGEES, REPUBLIC OF CHINA; VIETNAMESE NATIONALIST PARTY.