After the fall of the Qing dynasty in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, the country was thrown into turmoil. In the ensuing power vacuum, a large number of warlords seized control of different parts of the country. In order to defeat them and unify the country, Sun Yat-sen and the KMT sought help from foreign governments.
Though he made pleas to several Western democratic nations, none offered to help. It was only after turning to the Soviet Union in 1921 that Sun found aid. The communist Soviet Union agreed to help the KMT, under the condition that the smaller Chinese Communist Party be allowed to join. In 1923 the Soviet Union, KMT, and CCP made an agreement, the Sun-Joffe Manifesto, that said the Soviet Union would help China have one government and not many governments. Mikhail Borodin traveled to China in 1923 to help change the KMT to make it similar to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CCP and KMT were joined in the First United Front.

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