AHC: A smaller China
- Thread starter ALF0N53
- Start date
Constantinople
Banned
Hm... maybe if WWII doesn't happen/Japan doesn't invade in 1937? The communists don't get their soviet boost and the nationalists tear themselves apart, and the civil war settles into a semi-permanent balkanization, keeping Tibet, Manchuria, Xinjaing and Mongolia stay independent/expanded.
FYI Mongolia was a part of China until 1911, so I guess it need not be mentioned for this discussion.
Not-Manchukuo is tough - you don't have enough ethnic Manchus to populate that area.
Xinjiang: it's easier for it to join USSR than getting independence - the OTL independence really picked up after CCP started apartheid-ing the place
Tibet: will need British/Indian backing on this. Best time would be between 1911 and 1926
Marc A
If Japan doesn't invade the Communists are fucked. By late 1936 they have like maybe 40,000 badly armed and poorly fed men and trapped in one of the poorer and less desirable parts of China. The only reason they were saved is precisely because Japan was about to invade, which prompted Zhang Xueliang to launch the Xi'an Incident.
The Nationalists were fighting amongst themselves, true, but by 1936 there's no question that Chiang Kai-shek is top dog - at least, no one wanted to took the initiative to fuck with him, not after he took out the Cantonese warlords in mid-'36.
Marc A
Constantinople
Banned
I don't deny that... but... I'm just saying, that's a potential avenue. But you need the nationalists to implode a bit..
IOTL when Zhang Xueliang's boys came to grab him in Xi'an, Chiang tried to climb over the walls of his temporary residence and escape. He failed in the attempt and suffered an injury to his back. What if the fall killed him? There's a TL somewhere out in the Internetz with that exact premise, but I can't remember the name.
Or, you can have someone else in charge of the KMT. Chiang's rise to power gained momentum after Liao Zhongkai's assassination (most people believed it to be the doing of the rightist faction inside KMT, of which Chiang is NOT a part of - not at the time, at least), so if you managed to save Liao, you could potentially limit Chiang's power and leave Wang Jingwei in charge (IMHO he's an okay revolutionary figurehead but not that able of an administrator).
Marc A
What assures with a PoD 1900 that China would have the same leadership in OTL?
In OTL, The Empress Dowager changed her mind in 1900 from suppression of the Boxers to defend the Boxers.
There a lot of things that can still happen in China with a PoD 1900 that wouldnt make China of OTL look the same as ATL.
In OTL, The Empress Dowager changed her mind in 1900 from suppression of the Boxers to defend the Boxers.
There a lot of things that can still happen in China with a PoD 1900 that wouldnt make China of OTL look the same as ATL.
Jiang Jieshi doesn't send soldiers into Manchuria post-1945, and full-scale civil war is staved off with the help of the Soviet government for negotiations. Manchuria remains independent as a Communist puppet state (which of course insists that it's the real China.)
This is pretty much the only way you can get long-lasting Manchurian independence.
Soviets send more aid to Second East Turkestan Republic, and peace deal between Communist Manchuria/RoC preserves its independence in a somewhat expanded form from IOTL as a Soviet puppet. It's small and only takes up the northern three or so districts of Xinjiang, but is still independence for the Uighur Turks.
Republic of China is afraid of forcibly incorporating Tibet, as that would potentially lead to loss of necessary international support from the West and upset a delicate unstable situation. By the time their internal situation is semi-stable, Tibet is essentially an Indian puppet, and India has the edge over the deeply corrupt, unpopular, and decaying Republic of China in terms of power projection.
There, done.
Do they have to be independent states or can they be independent of China yet under the influence/control of other countries?
For Tibet the obvious solution is to bring it into Britain's sphere of influence. If they somehow become a protected state similar to Nepal or Bhutan then that should see them through to the mid-1940s and after that I could easily see India supporting them against China if the communists win and their are border disputes as in our timeline. Off the top of my head the Younghusband expedition of 1904 pushes things a touch more, the Chinese invasion of in 1910 to establish direct rule is just barely defeated by the Tibetans, the Tibetans realise that next time they might not be as lucky so approach the British who use the chaos of the Xinhai Revolution to accept. A railway is built from the border in northern India that roughly follows the same route as the Tibetan highways 219 and 318 to Lhasa and a small cantonment is built a short distance outside the city. A branch line is built to Garyarsa where there were apparently some gold deposits, and handily enough most of the gold and copper deposits in Tibet seem to be located alongside the river valleys that the railway line would follow so it's a double win.