 The KMT now became a rival government in opposition to the warlord Beiyang government based in Peking.Chiang assumed leadership of the KMT on 6 July 1926.Unlike Sun Yat-sen, whom he admired greatly and who forged all his political, economic, and revolutionary ideas primarily from what he had learned in Hawaii and indirectly through British Hong Kong and Empire of Japan under Meiji Restoration, Chiang knew relatively little about the West.