Relations between post-CCW KMT China and post-WWII Japan?

A Piece of History

In our timeline, relations between the People's Republic of China and Japan in the immediate aftermath fo World War II were tense since the PRC viewed Japan as a threat due to it being the home of US troops in the Pacific region, not helped by Japan's decision to officially recognize Taiwan as the legitimate government of China. There were unofficial trade ties, but any sort of diplomatic relationship between the two didn't start until the '70s and relations didn't start to become cordial until the 1980s.

What would a diplomatic relationship between a China ruled by the KMT post-Chinese Civil War and post-WWII Japan look like? Would the relationship be permanently scarred by the war crimes committed by Japan during the war?, despite them being on the same side in the Cold War as US allies?
 
AltoRegnant

AltoRegnant

Probably better, especially since KMT isnt gonna back the DPRK but it's probably still dominated by one question:

Does japan recognize the war crimes it committed in China?
 
Alcsentre Calanice

Alcsentre Calanice

Gone Fishin'
The interesting thing will be that China will be an internationally recognized regional power from the start. It's part of the American sphere and has a seat on the UN Security Council.

I'm pretty sure that the US will exert quite some pressure on Japan to resolve its conflicts with China. Japan won't be given a free ride in this TL.
 

General Tirpitz

Without PRC, China will be continued to be seen as America's primary partner in Asia instead of Japan, at least initially. I think that the US-China relationship might become much more complicated as time goes on though. My guess is though that there will be some sort of change in occupation policies even in this scenario, though the shift might not be as quick or decisive. The US still doesn't want to Japan becoming Communist and would want to decrease the cost of keeping troops there after few years. IOTL the US didn't really allow its allies to give any meaningful input when it came to its policies in Japan that wouldn't probably change here. Depending how the Civil War goes and how much troops the KMT could free, they might get their small occupation area in Aichi Prefecture, around Nagoya. Shikoku had the area discussed in 1945 but it seems that it was changed at some point after the occupation started and it became clear that it would be organized differently from Germany. In practice this would probably look quite similar to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force.

It should be noted that when it came to the Occupation, the Chinese government didn't take a particularly hard line on the matter. (The Chinese public was an entirely different matter though but I don't think their opinion mattered much here.) Although China did think that the Japanese war-making potential should be limited, the zaibatsu destroyed and so on, they also supported the rehabilitation of the Japanese economy in general and were keen about re-establishing trade relations between two nations.
 

General Tirpitz

Oliver Lambkin said:
Japan was the recipient of tremendous economic aid from the USA and allowed to retain its monarchy, albiet in constitutional form.
Click to expand...

The Japanese Monarchy would be probably retained also in this scenario, it was mostly a measure to make governing Japan easier and that justification wouldn't change significantly ITTL, especially as the US had more or less moved to that direction already when the occupation started. As much as MacArthur gets credit from this, it wasn't like he was the one who came up with the idea, it was a relatively common view among many people who handled occupation policies.

Regarding economic aid, it would be still coming, as getting Japan on its feet economically would be still important. After-all, Germany did also get massive amounts of aid too. During the Post-War Period there were some unofficial forms of economic aid, like indirect support for Japanese protectionist policies (by allowing high tarrifs on American goods in Japan while retaning low tarrifs on Japanese goods in the US for example), and the US might take a stricter stance on that. However, even IOTL this policy was partially crafted in order to help Japanese businesses which had lost the Chinese market, a need which wouldn't exist ITTL.
 
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AltoRegnant

AltoRegnant

Hold up... would Cheng back Ho Chi Minh during the 1st indochina war? Obviously hed want France out but at the same time that's another communist state on china's borders (which with the DPRK, PRC in Taiwan
(Maybe), the soviets, and I think a soviet puppet in mongolia, is starting to look bad).
 
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