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Half a dozen Nationalist Chinese what-ifs from the first half of the 20th century

1) What if Chiang never purged the left and listened to Borodin through the 20s?
When would the northern expedition have begun (Borodin opposed launching it in 1926) and where would it have aimed geographically? With what effect on Soviet, ChiNat, ChiCom, western and Japanese policies?

In OTL Borodin advised the northern expedition was too soon, and after the left-right split in the KMT he advocated advancing from Wuhan up to Beijing. Maybe in this TL, a northern expedition would have started later and gone a different route? Perhaps also this might have mucked with the beginnings of Japanese aggression into China.

2) What if Sun and KMT-CCP united front were ousted from Canton during the Sun-Joffe years between 1922 and 1925, could the United Front have gotten an alternate geographic base of support with Soviet assistance?

For example, possibly they could re-ensconce themselves in the far north, in Harbin or Qiqihar, being able to take advantage of Soviet extraterritorial protections in the Chinese Eastern Railway zone?

From there, would a successful “southern expedition” have been possible?

An interesting side effect would be that the great preponderance of Soviet interests in China, the railway concessions and the political HQs of the KMT and CCP would have all been placed in the same northern Manchurian basket. Might this have deterred Japanese advances to the Manchurian railway zone in 1932 or led the Soviets to oppose the Japanese advance more vigorously directly or by proxy?

Alternate locales to northern Manchuria that would also be closer to Soviet support than southern China might be Kalgan-Zhangjiakou in Inner Mongolia, fairly close to Soviet-back Outer Mongolia, or Urumqi Xinjiang or Lanzhou, Yenan or Xian in Gansu or Shaanxi provinces.

The far Northwest could have been tricky because of tougher than average Muslim warlords in the local area.


3) What if Chiang was overthrown or killed during the Central Plains War? How would the neo-warlord coalition have dealt with the challenges of the 1930s? How aggressively or effectively would they have fought the Communists or Japanese?

Could we have had an anomalous (to OTL) situation of Wang Jingwei being the head of a KMT-warlord-CCP coalition that eventually resists Japan, while Japan uses Chiang Kai-shek as a puppet ruler? the exact opposite of their alignments in OTL

4) What if intelligence chief Tai Li lived past 1946, would it be a benefit or a detriment to the regime in the Civil War?

5) What if Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan had decided to back the Wuhan-left KMT on Wang Jingwei over the Nanjing-right KMT of Chiang Kai-shek? Would that choke off further expansion and success by Chiang?

6) Could Chiang Kai-shek have benefitted from a slower, step-by-step northern expedition allowing him to set up a firmer, loyal administrative apparatus and to eschew the services of warlords bandwagoning to his cause?
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