BTW, it's certainly not wrong to translate 国民党 (kuomintang: "Citizens' Party," or what your history books called "the KMT") as "Nationalist Party," but I'm not sure why the NYT does so:
Mainland Chinese officials loathe Taiwan's current president, Chen Shui-bian, and his party, the Democratic Progressive Party, for pursuing greater political separation from the mainland. Beijing has been wary of the party’s candidate, Frank Hsieh, even though Mr. Hsieh has repeatedly voiced much more willingness than Mr. Chen to allow increased Taiwanese investment on the mainland and more cross-strait transportation links.
A victory by Mr. Hsieh could be perceived in Beijing as a high price to have paid for forcefully putting down demonstrations in Tibet.
Mr. Hsieh received an influential endorsement on Thursday. Lee Teng-hui, a former Nationalist president [!] of Taiwan who now favors much greater political independence from the mainland, said that he would vote for Mr. Hsieh.
You wouldn't even know they were talking about the KMT there, would you?
Added on 22 March: So between drinks last night at my friend's birthday party (unconnected to any March babies in my family), I started to wonder how you do translate 国民党. I mean, I always either read about it in Japanese (in which case the characters are used) or hear about it from people connected to Taiwan (who just call it the KMT). Wikipedia says that it can be referred to as the "Chinese Nationalist Party," which makes a lot more sense to me than just plain "Nationalist Party" given its origins.

Koba Smith
Re. the translation: 国民 means "citizen," so I wasn't giving something I'd read elsewhere, just a literal rendering of what 国民 + 党 means.