What will be the best case scenario for China since the 1900s? It can be under the monarchy or the republic. As we know, OTL China is a rising powerhouse today on its path towards superpower.
Best case scenario for modern China
- Thread starter EmperorBuaya
- Start date
-
- Tags
- china
Mao falls ill in 1956 and from his deathbed announces the Hundred Flowers Campaign. The dying words of Mao are recorded as "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend". A later crackdown will likely still occur but Mao's cult of personality will make sustained persecution of ideological opposition a lot harder. And with his death there's no Great Leap Forward in '58 or Cultural Revolution, or at least a very different and less disastrous one.
My current sketch is keeping the KMT better balanced between its left and right wing factions, so no break away Communists and no dysfunctional ROK under Chiang Kai-shek, trying to get the reforms of the left and the unification from the right working together, avoiding the Sino-Japanese conflict post 1927 or reducing it to a more border, client state, warlord affair at worst. So I might gain a full generation of development and avoid the spasmodic setbacks under both regimes. So maybe we get a stronger industrial economy taking root as early as the 1940s/1950s, integrated into a global trade system that allows the take off to begin as soon as the 1960s-era. With better ties to Europe and America, China becomes a more balanced partner, not merely a source of low cost labor in lieu of automation, also consuming better so the imbalances are less stark, opening even more investment to spread the wealth deeper into the populace at large. My options are no 21 Demands, no USSR, no break in Anglo-Japanese relations, a Germany staying partnered in China as a non-imperial power, a better US policy and actions, no WW2, in combination or in isolation.
KMT getting more support from USA and winning CCW. Then reforming and becoming democracy in early eighties.
The KMT would only be able to win the Chinese civil war if they were willing and able to implement land reform and tackle the massive postwar inflation. It would also help if the KMT did not repress liberal and left wing critics of the government and if they did not hire Japanese mercenaries after the war. More aid from the US won't help much. OTL monetary aid ended up enriching some random warlords, and military equipment was mostly captured by the communists.
The best possible China would result from a stable republic emerging after the fall of the Qing, averting the Warlord era, the Japanese invasion and the Civil War. I am not sure how that can be done, though I think it is probably necessary for Yuan Shikai to die earlier.
The best possible China would result from a stable republic emerging after the fall of the Qing, averting the Warlord era, the Japanese invasion and the Civil War. I am not sure how that can be done, though I think it is probably necessary for Yuan Shikai to die earlier.
More towards the former. IMO, people can't enjoy good democracy without the good dose of economic and political strength.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
If we’re talking about economic strength and geopolitical power more than political rights or avoiding humanitarian disasters - there’s a case that modern Chinese capitalism is rooted in the grassroots responses to the economic catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward. As such, we could say killing Mao as late as 1962, so as to skip the Cultural Revolution and skip right to liberalization, would be “best”.
January 1, 1900, Cixi falls down a flight of stairs and dies, the Guangxu Emperor is restored and he tries resuming the 100 Days Reforms where he left off. Realizing that their popularity has sunken so low that it has broken through the floor and now resides in a crater in the basement, the restored Guangxu Emperor realizes that they have literally nothing to lose and declares war on Japan in early 1905. The Japanese suddenly have the Beiyang army in their rear and are swiftly crushed between the Russians and the Qing. The Treaty of Shimonoseki is revoked and confidence in the government soars for the first time in nearly a century.
People put their heads back down, revolution returns to the fringe, and China has a nice peaceful 20th century of paced reform and modernization while Europe burns down twice.
As I have got older I have found myself having more sympathy for Cixi, and I fully acknowlege her flaws. Beating back the foreign invaders was always a secondary problem to controling internal Chinese politics and revolution and of course survial of the imperial regime. It is easy as outsiders to say, "beat the foreigners and reform will follow," and it has become a very easy and convenient narative for the Communist Party (a trip to the destroyed Summer Palace was very "interesting"). I strongly suspect it wouldn't be that easy and you are probably still looking of decades of pain to sort the internal politics out.
I never saw the Imperial Chinese decline from this side of point. Is very simple and enlightening. And make just realize it was all the opposite of what the Japanese did.
Oh I recognize that she had her reasons for doing what she did, but I don't see much hope for the Qing as long as she and (perhaps more importantly) the reactionary clique surrounding her remain in power. The Guangxu Emperor is both more legitimate in a dynastic sense and reform minded so he'd probably be not a great reformer but at least a step up who doesn't rock the boat so much as to sink it.
Also my thought process is less "beat the foreigners and reform will follow," and more "beat some of the foreigners and you'll regain enough public faith to avoid 1911," as the Xinhai Revolution is certainly where China's 20th century went to hell in a handbasket. I may have painted too rose-y a picture in my previous post, but any 20th century which doesn't include decades of warlordism, an apocalyptic war with Japan or Mao, is pretty good for China compared to OTL.
I mostly agree, but wouldn't she do a better job as the left wing of a national China then as the right wing of a communist China? Presumably the best road for China in the 20th century involves stabilising early enough to not be a rotting basket case in 1937 (thus avoiding the devastation the war), which pretty much involves a more balanced KMT (as mentioned above) avoiding the political rift and gradually building up.
I agree. I just don't think warlordism and Japan are avoidable. You have had the best part of a century of regions semi-successfully resisting centralised power. People being people means they are just going to keep trying. I would argue that the Emperor's best chance is to try and be at the head of the most powerful faction and play the long game of reunification.
Japan is going to make a play no matter what. Weakened China is just too tempting and they and the Russians are the closest and best positioned. It may be glib to say, but the problem OTL was that it was too easy for Japan. A couple of colonels could get dunk on Friday night and wake up on Monday with Manchuria. So of course they kept doing it until they got quagmired. How can you make it so Japan has to at least think a bit?
About the only way I can imagine is backing the Russians in the Russo-Japanese war. It is playing with fire but it will keep both powers wary looking at eachother and not China. It might even butterfly away chunks of WWI? But short of Russia no one cares enough about China to offer any sort of protection.
China before WWI is an odd tangle, the Russians I think really wanted to expand from Siberia towards China and the sea, the British blocked them with Japan, who with America added on gain Korea as a fire stop, Britain rules the Yangtze, Germany arrives late and further blocks Russia with Tsingtao while complicating Japan's position. All is well until the RJW undoes Russia's command, opens the Balkans to her loss and makes that more important to re-secure so she can return to reassert in China and push back Japan. In the interim she has Germany to deal with so adds France as a counter only to get embroiled in an unplanned war in Europe that had too much to do with French ambitions and Austrian arrogance. Japan again catapulted into the big leagues while China cannot find a way to gain a position to play from.
Germany might have moved up to China's side to counter the Anglo-Japanese and complicate Russia's place but time ran out. If the USA had vision it would have stepped in to champion China. In theory Britain could have dropped Japan after the RJW and shifted to champion China, pushing out the others while playing more coy in Europe, feeding scraps to the USA and even Japan but in fact subjugating China as it had the Ottomans with debt and trade, and then Indians playing middle man in the decentralized mess. So the RJW might be the most productive place to look for an ally for China. I prefer Germany who is not strong or experienced enough to actually take control but has money and skill to industrialize, develop and move China up, next is the USA who can do even more but has a shorter attention span and far less certainty on staying the course, last would have been Japan, China could roll the dice and get Japan as "big brother", let them invest and fend off the Europeans, plying friendship behind their backs, again likely the USA or Germany hoping to break the chains when Japan hits a foe bigger then her without ambitions to take China as the prize. But that is some hardball poker.
You might find this of some interest.
Basically, Yuan Shih-Kai dies days after getting elected president and all the different factions scramble and get themselves a compromise leader to hold things together.
It's basically a cleaned up and heavily expanded version of our forum's very own Superpower Empire timeline.