1941: China attacks Pearl Harbour?

Would it be possible to butterfly away Mao and Communism in China and having China becoming what Japan was the early 20th Century? Having the US having to fight the Chinese after 1941 where the Chinese Airforce attacked Pearl Harbour?
 
Not really likely with a POD post-1900. I'm not even sure why you are mentioning Mao and the Communist unless you have no concept of Chinese history and are just picking Chinese historically figures out of a hat.
 
POD would be way far back in time and would probaly butterfly away Mao, Maybe a succesful invasion of Japan by Kublai Khan? No kamizae?
 
I think this is a scenario where the Qing survive and become the militaristic regional power in place of Japan, though I could be wrong. Of course, all of this requires a 19th century POD and a veritable butterfly genocide.
 
Would it be possible to butterfly away Mao and Communism in China and having China becoming what Japan was the early 20th Century? Having the US having to fight the Chinese after 1941 where the Chinese Airforce attacked Pearl Harbour?

:confused:

There is no non-ASB way that no Mao and no Communism in China = a powerful, expansionist China early in the 20th Century that supplants Japan as you describe.

Also, please be aware that we who threw off the shackles of the British tyrant 11 score and 14 years ago do not put a "u" in harbor.:D;)
 
:confused:

There is no non-ASB way that no Mao and no Communism in China = a powerful, expansionist China early in the 20th Century that supplants Japan as you describe.

Agreed,. It would need a much earlier POD.

Also, please be aware that we who threw off the shackles of the British tyrant 11 score and 14 years ago do not put a "u" in harbor.:D;)

So you can't spell. One of the problems of lacking civilised government. :p;)

Also technically it was 11 score and 7 years ago that the French helped you win the civil war.

Steve
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The Chinese have always been a land based and focused power. Japan falling under China's sway is possible, depending on the POD, but finding a reason for the Chinese to go 5,000 miles from home to pick a fight with the U.S. is a bit of a reach.

The Japanese needed to knock out the U.S. fleet as part of their grab of the DEI and SE Asia. The Philippines were positioned perfectly to interdict materials going from the Sumatran oil fields or Malayan rubber plantations to Japan. Japan had to take them out to ensure a free flow of resources. China would not have had that problem. Sending some of the bulk cargo by ship would have been handy (not to mention cheaper) by a railway network and/or oil pipeline would do just fine and would be far more difficult to interdict.
 
The Japanese needed to knock out the U.S. fleet as part of their grab of the DEI and SE Asia. The Philippines were positioned perfectly to interdict materials going from the Sumatran oil fields or Malayan rubber plantations to Japan. Japan had to take them out to ensure a free flow of resources. China would not have had that problem. Sending some of the bulk cargo by ship would have been handy (not to mention cheaper) by a railway network and/or oil pipeline would do just fine and would be far more difficult to interdict.

Not to mention the question of just why China would want to pick a fight with the US over resources, when China is nowhere near as barren as Japan in terms of raw materials.
 
I agree; you'd need a far earlier PoD, if you can get it at all. Japan modernized quickly because it had always seen itself as a recipient of Chinese culture, so when Commodore Perry opened Japan to the West, they instantly started assimilating this new Western culture and imitating the West by building up their own empire. They were poor in resources, so they decided they had to attack the US, and things went from there. Neither of these would happen in China: China was the source of its own culture, and they had their own natural resources.
 
You'd need a POD along the lines of Guangxu emperor (or his uncle) becoming the equivalent of a Chinese Meji. However, if you do that, you'd be looking at China as an economic power the equivalent of the United States with a population of 400M+ and massive industrial infrastructure along its coast and its major rivers.

In such a scenario, you'd probably have the US, Brits, and Japanese allied against the Chinese.
 

loughery111

Banned
Short Answer: No.

Medium Answer: No, Mao was a two-bit player until after WWI anyway, and no POD is going to have the Chinese launching an offensive war against the USA.

Long Answer: Assuming we manage to find a POD in the last decade of the 19th century or first decade of the 20th that either allows the Qing some breathing room to reform or allows a real Republic to come to power, there's still no reason for China to go halfway across the Pacific to attack the world's premier naval power (which happens to be allied to the other premier naval power as well). There are three reasons for this:
1. They don't need to import EVERYTHING the way Japan did. There's plenty of coal/iron/most every other resource except oil, and they can buy oil off the Russians, or the Dutch, or the Americans. There is also the possibility that they'll find Daqing early due to the lack of a civil war and some real economic development after 1910.
2. Related to that, there is almost no way that the Chinese government is going to take that odd militarist turn that Japan's did after 1920. Simply put, the Japanese constitution at the time was based on the Prussian and was predisposed towards having real authority vested in the military. Anything China was likely to arrive at, be it a Qing constitutional monarchy or a Republic, would likely have been based on the UK or the US.
3. Lastly, the same thinking that applied to China today would have applied then as well; a war is the last thing they need, as it will screw with their rapidly expanding economy.
 
Over in the ASB forum there are a few threads about countries having reversed roles in WWII. I think I'll go steal this idea.
 
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