In the period following the fall of the Qing Dynasty, China was ruled by various actors, each of which employed some system of household or personal identification. During the Japanese occupation, the Japanese employed a system used to identify those under their rule and to fund their war effort. Similarly, the Kuomintang utilized the system to monitor the activities of their opponents, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Chinese Communist Party in turn used a system called lianbao, which bundled families into groups of five to aid tracking and impede counterrevolutionaries.