<> The People's Republic of China (PRC) is led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is also known as the Communist Party of China (CPC). The CCP won the Chinese Civil War against the Kuomintang under Mao Zedong's leadership, and in 1949, Mao declared the establishment of the People's Republic of China. China has been ruled by the CCP ever since, and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is under its sole authority. The party's constitution, which outlines the ideological beliefs of the party and is collectively referred to as socialism with Chinese characteristics, has been updated by each subsequent CCP leader with their own theories. The CCP will have more than 96 million members in 2022, making it the second-largest political party in the world in terms of membership after the Bharatiya Janata Party in India. The Chinese public typically refers to the CCP as "the Party."[3] In 1921, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao founded the CCP with the assistance of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Communist International. The CCP joined the Kuomintang (KMT), the organized left wing of the larger nationalist movement, for the first six years of its existence. But when Chiang Kai-shek's right wing of the KMT turned against the CCP and killed tens of thousands of party members, the two parties split and started a long civil war. During the following decade of close quarters combat, Mao Zedong rose to turn into the most persuasive figure in the CCP, and the party laid out major areas of strength for an among the provincial working class with its territory change strategies. Throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War, support for the CCP increased, and following the Japanese surrender in 1945, the CCP won the communist revolution against the KMT government. On October 1, 1949, the CCP established the People's Republic of China following the KMT's retreat to Taiwan.