It is even better with no GLF or CR. I don't know where the idea comes from that Communist China was/isn't corrupt. The KMT might have been corrupt but so was/is the CCP.
Could China have been as successful as it is today if the Communists did not win?
- Thread starter Malone
- Start date
marathag
Banned
Unlikely for KMT China to take over Tibet or have a real border war with India, and is unlikely to lift a finger to help the North Vietnamese past giving the French a black eye.
There would be millions more Chinese citizens living in poverty, but that beats being dead from the purges and GLF and the rest of Mao's idiocy.
Don't get me wrong, CKs wouldn't bat an eyelash at doing policy result of a few million death, but not tens of millions
There would be millions more Chinese citizens living in poverty, but that beats being dead from the purges and GLF and the rest of Mao's idiocy.
Don't get me wrong, CKs wouldn't bat an eyelash at doing policy result of a few million death, but not tens of millions
Developmentally China probably looks pretty similar. The details are certainly different, but we're probably still looking at a middle income country that undergoes the demographic transition before undergoing the economic transition, with an under developed service sector, an overburdened environment, and a tendency to step on its neighbours' toes. There will still be cities with pristine skylines that would make New York jealous, and there will still be slums within walking distance of those cities' CBDs. There will still be modern cities built for millions but inhabited by thousands, while there are still rural villages without running water. Basically, China is still going to try to sprint the marathon of modernization, and fall short accordingly.
Agreed, Tibet was recognized as part of China. Outside of that I wonder why there would be millions more in poverty than OTL. Maoist China was hardly wallowing in wealth.
marathag
Banned
Simply, once they are dead, they no longer need to be housed or fed, and they will have no more children. A set amount of resources and jobs make for improved conditions for the survivors.
For Tibet, more pressing would be the Mongolian People's Republic, the puppet of the USSR, from Inner Mongolia. Outer Mongolia was just as much a part of China as Tibet. Maybe more so, to CKS, where that was a real bone of contention between him and Stalin at the Yalta Conference
Except resources are not a set amount, they vary with tech and workers. With virtually any resource you can name a bigger gain in available resources can result from a relatively small increase in price. Even that price increase tends to go away in time due to the tech becoming better developed.
marathag
Banned
Until China could modernize the Ag sector, there's a set amount of foodstuffs. same for other areas.
With more people alive, it will take longer to raise the overall poverty rate. There's just more poor people that needs help. Purging them is fast and easy. improving their lives, that's harder and takes longer.
IMO one of the primary reasons would be maintaining it as a buffer with India. Tibet was never actually part of China; it was a banner kingdom during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It held the same status under the old imperial system that Mongolia did. They were nominally independent kingdoms that sent tribute to Beijing on a yearly basis and submitted to imperial control over their militaries. In the long run it is fairly cheap to maintain puppet or tributary states like Tibet. There's no need to assign bureaucrats or send tax revenue to Lhasa for infrastructure upkeep or construction, no concerns about internal security, and no need to keep the population fed, housed, or clothed.
Tibet had an extremely small population then and now, and has limited infrastructure. The only reason that the People's Republic has dumped money into it over the last twenty years has been the dwindling Yellow and Yangtze River drainage and water flow issues; both rivers' headwaters are in the Himalayas and controlling them is a concern to the CPC given water level impacts from rapid industrialization. The northern provinces are a decade away from significant water shortages, and controlling water drainage out of the Himalayas is step one to ensuring there will be no water riots in Beijing or Tianjin.
From the perspective of a victorious GMD regime undergoing postwar reconstruction and development, there's little to be gained by invading and annexing Tibet. It's easier to send a small garrison to Lhasa along with maybe an expanded diplomatic presence; establish favorable trade terms and promises of expanded financial assistance in exchange for agreements not to sign defense agreements with India, Pakistan, or the Soviet Union. Similar agreements could be struck with East Turkestan with the added bonus of looking good in front of the Soviets who had propped up East Turkestan during the 1930s with a friendly regime.
There's another reason why they would not bother with Tibet: Yunnan Province. CKS would probably need to spend a few years dealing with Long Yun before anything substantive could be done in the western areas. Yunnan spent the war functionally independent and Yun gave the middle finger to Chongqing every time they asked for tax revenue. There were fairly accurate rumors that Yun had siphoned off enough Lend Lease that came into Kunming to live extremely comfortably while paying lip service to loyalty to Chongqing and double-dealing with both the Japanese and the Nanjing puppet regime under Wang Jingwei. The opium fields in Yunnan operated throughout the war and were even expanded, and the Triads were able to keep the opium and heroin dens stocked even while most of the country starved.
The CPC dealt with Long Yun by buying him off with party membership and let him run Yunnan until the Great Leap Forward. CKS would not have that ability, nor would he have the inclination to do so. Yun was intensely disliked by the GMD, and it is unlikely that they'd leave him alone once the CPC was out of the way. So, they'd have to launch a 'Southwestern Campaign' similar to the Northern Campaign, aimed at Kunming, with the goal of removing Yun and deconstructing the Yunnan narco-state. If they wanted to do a legitimate job of it and build it up into a functional province like Guangdong or Jiangsu, under the GMD that's a task of probably a half-decade to a full decade.
The CPC had the latitude to do whatever the hell they wanted; the anti-opium campaign prior to the GLF was as bloody and brutal as any of the post-1949 anti-land owner campaigns. Opium den owners were "Rehabilitated" (sent to forced labor camps/reeducation camps) or just straight up publicly executed; opium field owners were not usually given the option of forced labor camps, they were just executed. So, with a nominally transparent regime paying lip service to democratization and development, it'll take longer. People are going to have to be bought off, incentives given to local Yunnan farmers to change crops from opium to something less likely to be used to support corruption/organized crime, and the local bureaucracy purged of Yun's supporters. That's not even counting the money that needs to be spent on building railroad and paved highways to connect Yunnan to Sichuan and Guangdong Provinces and integrating it into the national economy.
So by the time that's done, it'll probably be the mid-late 1950s, and the GMD would have to maintain an independent Tibet and Turkestan to look good for international audiences and keep the US happy. I'd also guess that the Americans would use a friendly tributary status for Tibet and Turkestan as an excuse to plonk down a few long-range radar stations near the Soviet Central Asian republics. So, there's another reason to maintain a nominally independent tributary Tibetan state as well.
Long-winded response, I know.
As said above, Outer Mongolia, Tibet, and Turkestan were considered "Banner/Tributary Kingdoms" under the old Ming and Qing systems; they sent tribute and armed soldiers to the imperial government in Beijing in exchange for the continued existence of their monarchies. Outer Mongolia was a bone of contention because the Soviets invaded in 1921 to overthrow the Bloody Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg and prop up the Mongolian People's Party. Under diplomatic agreements that went back to the 1860s, the Russians agreed to leaving the Mongolian state alone in exchange for the Qing recognizing the Russian claims on Vladivostok and the Ussuri River territorial cession. The GMD didn't have the military power to physically invade Mongolia at that point, so the best that CKS could do at Tehran was to lob those arguments at Stalin.
All I can say is that a narrow-focus TL with Long Yun’s Yunnan as the Colombia of the east, with Kunming Triads effectively becoming the most powerful drug cartel on Earth and the GMD going to war with them and the internal shenanigans in China this would cause… I’d read the HELL out of that.
If I knew more about China or wasn’t writing three TLs already I’d write it myself. Fascinating series of posts, and fascinating hook.
I , for one, have no problems with "long-winded responses" when they contain a lot of information and logical arguments. What you said was reasonable and I think quite likely.
As for the no Cultural Revolution bit - well, Jiang and the GMD did have the New Life Movement thing going on, which could be seen as fascism with Chinese characteristics (and a dose of old-fashioned New England Puritanism). It could be scaled up as the GMD's version of the Cultural Revolution, if one wanted to go in that direction for a TL. Also, around the same time as the Cultural Revolution IOTL, Jiang's regime created:
en.wikipedia.org
Chinese Cultural Renaissance - Wikipedia
Last edited:
As for the no Cultural Revolution bit - well, Jiang and the GMD did have the New Life Movement thing going on, which could be seen as fascism with Chinese characteristics (and a dose of old-fashioned New England Puritanism). It could be scaled up as the GMD's version of the Cultural Revolution, if one wanted to go in that direction for a TL. Also, around the same time as the Cultural Revolution IOTL, Jiang's regime created:
Chinese Cultural Renaissance - Wikipedia
What isn't the article telling us? On the surface it seems pretty unobjectionable, basically preserving Chinese culture while building theaters and art museums. Among other guess I would guess it was to strengthen any CKS personality cult, propagandize government policy and possibly make Confucianism the state religion. Anything else?
The problem is that it was a specific type of Chinese culture that was being promoted that didn't really accord with anything that existed in Taiwan at that time. In effect, it was basically a revived version of the New Life Movement, which immediately sets off red flags for me.
I don't think it'd be as brutal as the Great leap forward as Mao deliberately targeted traditional Chinese institutions and intellectuals to strengthen his own personality cult. Also, the famine that is caused by the great leap forward would definitely not occur if cks won since he isn't Mao. I'd think that the movement would treat foreigners horribly at worst while not affecting most of the main Chinese populace, which is much better than the great leap forward as 1. no famine and 2. no killing of intellectuals.As for the no Cultural Revolution bit - well, Jiang and the GMD did have the New Life Movement thing going on, which could be seen as fascism with Chinese characteristics (and a dose of old-fashioned New England Puritanism). It could be scaled up as the GMD's version of the Cultural Revolution, if one wanted to go in that direction for a TL. Also, around the same time as the Cultural Revolution IOTL, Jiang's regime created:
Chinese Cultural Renaissance - Wikipedia
China can't be worse off than being ruled by Mao ZeDong.
Tibet was viewed as part of China by both the international community and the Chinese themselves. Given the ease of the annexing it, the control over water resources, and legitimacy that comes with it. Any stable Chinese government will annex Tibet. Same thing applies to East Turkestan.
Well China under Chiang-Kai Shek wouldn't be worse than China ruled by Mao Zedong. A situation where the 2nd Sino Japanese War somehow doesn't expand across the Pacific would definitely be worse for China than Mao Zedong. Even if Japan never manages to get effective control of the country, which they probably won't, it's going to be even more of a bloodbath than OTL.