And after the first election, Sun Yat-sen's party, the Guomindang, were the largest, but they weren't the majority. So Sun Yat-sen deferred to Yuan, which turned out to be a huge mistake, because he then outlawed the Guomindang party and ruled as dictator. But then when Yuan Shikai died in 1916, China's first non-dynastic government in over 3,000 years completely fell apart. Localism reasserted itself, with large-scale landlords, with small-scale armies ruling all the parts of China that weren't controlled by foreigners. You might remember this phenomenon from earlier in Chinese history, first during the Warring States period, and then again for 300 years between the end of the Han and the rise of the Shui. So the period in Chinese history between 1912 and 1949 is sometimes called the Chinese Republic, although that gives the government a bit too much credit. The leading group trying to reform China into a nation-state was the Guomindang, but after 1920, the Chinese Communist Party was also in the mix.