I was reading through the Wikipedia entry on the Kuomintang and was surprised that they were anti-imperialist and fairly anti-capitalist, at least back in the day. There is a part there that says the Marxist in the KMT thought that China had already passed through it's feudal stage and was in a stagnant capitalist stage. My impression was that the KMT were essentially like the nationalist in German, Japan, or modern USA (they very well may have been, I suppose). I was also a little surprised that the USSR backed the KMT over the CPC too.
So really what was the beef between the two on an ideological basis?
EDIT: Sun Yat-sen is also interesting to read about. The megathread, that I somehow missed reading four months ago, was an interesting review.
Something to remember as well, the Soviets in the 1920s were fighting a war on basically all sides against many enemies, both Russian and foreign. Backing the KMT was seen to be a pragmatic way to relieve pressure in the far East from Japan, as the KMT under Sun Yat Sen were a relatively large anti-imperial party compared to the Communists, who were at this time a small but growing faction in the left wing of the KMT.
Yeah, I saw that Lenin and Stalin both supported the KMT in the beginning (1920s) but let the Communist know that they should take up arms when the shit started going down in Shanghai (late 20s, early 30s). I was glad to see that the USSR supported the CPC after they got out via the Long March (since it made better sense).