DBWI: Mao Zedong survives

SeaBos

If you don’t know, Mao Zedong was a Hunanese pesant that rose to become one of the founders of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army as well and served as a leader in the Jiangxi Soviet. It was during that time that he was in his own words, “brought low,” by being pushed into a less powerful position and catching malaria from which he never recovered. What if he had recovered and taken part in the Long March? How would having a, by all accounts, charismatic leader with radical politics effect the Chinese communists’ efforts?
 
Bomster

Bomster

Whether Mao would have lived or not didn’t really matter. The Chinese communists were in just too bad of a state to even have a chance at conquering China. A rogue band of communists is not going to take control of a nation of hundreds of millions of people. The ROC simply had greater advantages in both military and leadership.
 
Psmith

Psmith

Probably would make little difference. The Chinese Communist Movement was so insignificant, fragmented and generally unwanted amongst the general population that its pretty much ASB for them to succeed in uniting the country, under a charismatic leader or not. It could however grow a significant enough thorn in Nanjing's side for the 2nd Sino-Japanese War to turn out a different affair altogether, with a 2nd flank for Chiang Kai-Shek to face perhaps?
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

To even give them a hope, you would need generous support from the Soviet Union - and, well, Moscow was neither willing nor able to help.
 

Carl Schwamberger

Moscow did make the effort to establish Communist governments/armies in northern Korea & Manchuria. Perhaps if this Mao had made it to the USSR he'd had some role in the Manchuria effort or the Soviet sponsored Chinese group. The latter had arguably less success than the earlier 1920s effort, but it would extend this Mao's career into the 1940s.
 

CountDVB

Alot of people here seem to underestimate the amount of pressure events were on China at the time. After all, no one thought much of Stalin until it was too late to stop him and Kai-Shek had a lot of luck... A charismatic leader could've brought more success to the Communists in China.
 

Johnrankins

martymcfly said:
Mao was just another poor, uneducated peasant. No different from hundreds of millions of other Chinese at the time. Doubtful he would've made much of an impact had he survived.
Click to expand...

And a disaster if he did have an impact. Someone as uneducated as Mao would have real difficulties ruling well in the modern world.
 
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