What if the UN intervened in the Chinese Civil War?

[ComradeFlyer]

sorry about the picture quality, i took it using my cellphone camera in a poorly lit room...

as for the Constitution, I would assume there would be some kind of structure for the reintegration of the Communist North, but the book itself doesn't delve into that in any great detail.

 

[ComradeFlyer]

the other thing that I wanted to add, I differ in opinion a bit with the book in that I think if the Soviets were backing this northern state, they would have been adamant about retaining coastal access, especially since I can easily see the Sovits continuing to use Port Arthur as a major Pacific base.

 

[Dan1988]

Okay, good on the picture. I'll see if I can use Wiki templates to create a better version.

EDIT: Okay, so I made a quick map. I'm sorry if the border between the ALT PRC/ROC isn't consistent with the photo (as is some of the text) but it's the best I can do. It'll be in the next post.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

What's the premise of that book?

I have the book also... the premise is that Chiang doesn't go on the offensive into Manchuria.... by not taking on the Communists in ther "home turf" he keeps a nationalist China on the mainland, with Manchuria ending up a Soviet dominated Chinese communist state, basically East Germany in East Asia.

That's the premise of the essay. The book itself is a collection of various essays and such. Some, like the China one, seem reasonable and believable. Others are not so much, even by the standards of amateur alternate history. Such as "Napoleon's Invasion of North America", where the only real reason that the US doesn't fall to Napoleon is because of the mosquito. Or "Prime Minister Halifax", where a Britain that folds (and becomes pro-Nazi policy-wise) and a non-involved US leads to not only the Soviets owning all of Europe by 1946 despite a more successful Barborosa, but leapfrogging the US and soon to become the sole nuclear superpower.



Probably the stupidest one is David Fromkin's "Triumph of the Dictators". Apparently, according to Fromkin, Hitler and Stalin were poised to be BFFs, Japan was "ready to... invade India" and ignore the US and its embargo by seizing the Indies, from which Japan would ship tons of oil to Germany. Then Hitler should send the bulk of his armies under Rommel (who took the entire Middle East with a single division) to invade India, from which a land link would be made between Germany and Japan, after which Europe, Asia, and Africa would belong to the unbeatable Nazi-Soviet-Japanese alliance.

So unbeatable and resource superior to the US, as a matter of fact, that, and I'm quoting straight from the passage, "the English-speaking countries would have been isolated in a hostile world and would have had no realistic option but to make their peace with the enemy, retaining some autonomy for a time, perhaps, but doomed to ultimately succumb. Nazi Germany, as the leader of the coalition, would have ruled the world." And only thanks to the entirely unexpected and unreasonable Nazi invasion was the world saved from eternally being under a perfectly coordinated totalitarian rule.

Just the number of inaccuracies, ignorances, and oversimplification present in these four paragraphs and a sentence hurts. I was hoping better from an actual scholar.

 

[Dan1988]

CF, here's the map:

And the comparison between the two:

 

[Hendryk]

This is very similar to an essay in a collection I have. The essay is called "China Without Tears: If Chiang Kai-shek Hadn't Gambled in 1946" by Arthur Waldron. Have you read it?

I also have that book, and I mostly agree with that TL. My only nitpick is the gratuitous independence on Xinjiang and Tibet; a Nationalist China, once a modus vivendi had been achieved with Communist Manchuria, would have been just as adamant about consolidating its control on both regions as a Communist one.

 

[Analytical Engine]

I also have that book, and I mostly agree with that TL. My only nitpick is the gratuitous independence on Xinjiang and Tibet; a Nationalist China, once a modus vivendi had been achieved with Communist Manchuria, would have been just as adamant about consolidating its control on both regions as a Communist one.

It would probably have been just as adamant to reconquer Mongolia, come to think of it.

 

[Kang Seung Jae]

If Chiang had played his cards right, there is no need for the UN.


USSR believed that it was better for CCP to be under a coalition government with the KMT.

KMT had all the best weapons and the best starting point (southern China)

He had the political support of practically every government on Earth.



But yet he lost, because he didn't use the tanks and the airplanes the US gave him, his cronies explioted the people, KMT was to afriad of anyone not KMT that they started executing leaders of the former-Japanese occupied territoies (thereby losing potential support, and driving people to the CCP), and split up/overextended his armies to get major cities (allowing CCP to isolate the cities and slowly starve the KMT).


In the end, CCP won fair and square, and the world recognized it. That was why Marshall had Truman not send more US troops into China, and why ROC would later be kicked out of the UN.


Chiang was an unfortunate loser.

 

[Hendryk]

It would probably have been just as adamant to reconquer Mongolia, come to think of it.

True, but Mongolia being at that point a Soviet puppet state, that would have been out of the question. Xinjiang and Tibet, OTOH, were fair game.

 

[Dan1988]

Okay, so I tried to see if I can get the book and it shows up with "Library Use Only." What a bummer!

 

[Wendell]

It would probably have been just as adamant to reconquer Mongolia, come to think of it.

I disagree. The only place possibly being reconquered is Tibet. Sinkiang, like Mongolia and TTL's Manchuria, would be a Soviet client state.