The first National Assembly was elected in November 1947 and met in Nanking in March 1948. However, in the next year, the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China lost mainland China in the Chinese Civil War and retreated to Taiwan. The National Assembly resumed its meeting in Taipei in 1954. In the 1990s, its parliamentary powers were gradually transferred to the Legislative Yuan and direct democracy exercised by the Taiwanese people before constitutional amendments made it a dormant body in 2000 and fully defunct in 2005.