A "Vietnam" on Steroids??

WI The US had decided to put large scale forces in favour of the Nationalist Chinese from about 1947?

Is my guess right?

Does Chang win?

Does the US assist Chang in the way it "helped" Diem?
 
WI The US had decided to put large scale forces in favour of the Nationalist Chinese from about 1947?

Is my guess right?

Does Chang win?

Does the US assist Chang in the way it "helped" Diem?

The forces might help, but AFAIK Chiang only grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory due to the interference of American advisers. He had the Communists on the ropes in 1948, and it was only the insistence of the Americans that he try to make a settlement which allowed the Communist forces time to regroup.

So the forces in themselves might help, simply as bodies on the ground, but it's nt like Chiang was short on those. I doubt American advice will help - in fact it's likely to do more harm than good.
 
Another item that could make things ugly is that, Chiang Kai-shek's government in OTL used Burma/ Mynanmar as a means to produce high grade heroin and opium (hence the name "China white"), which would be sold later into the United States and Western Europe via the CIA starting in 1951. In the ATL proposed, it is certainly likely that the Diem regime would be used to grow and transport heroin and opium. Under these circumstances this could also serve to create popular discontent and support for the Communist rebellion under Ho Chi Minh....
 

Hendryk

Banned
The forces might help, but AFAIK Chiang only grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory due to the interference of American advisers. He had the Communists on the ropes in 1948, and it was only the insistence of the Americans that he try to make a settlement which allowed the Communist forces time to regroup.

So the forces in themselves might help, simply as bodies on the ground, but it's nt like Chiang was short on those. I doubt American advice will help - in fact it's likely to do more harm than good.
Well, at least if the US actually deploy troops in support of the Nationalists, it means they won't insist on a negotiated settlement with the Communists and Jiang will have free rein to finish them off.
 
Well, at least if the US actually deploy troops in support of the Nationalists, it means they won't insist on a negotiated settlement with the Communists and Jiang will have free rein to finish them off.

Ah... hadn't thought of that. True enough.

PS: What is the correct spelling of his name? Chiang Kai-Shek is one I've seen, Jiang... something, or something else? Well, obviously the correct spelling is in Chinese, but you know what I mean...
 

Hendryk

Banned
What is the correct spelling of his name? Chiang Kai-Shek is one I've seen, Jiang... something, or something else? Well, obviously the correct spelling is in Chinese, but you know what I mean...
It depends which transliteration system you endorse. Some people here profess a preference for Wade-Giles because, according to them, it's more elegant. It's a point of view I don't share and, since China uses Pinyin, then Pinyin is what I use too. (Even Taiwan is slowly shifting from Wade-Giles to Pinyin). So, in Wade-Giles, one writes Chiang Kai-shek; in Pinyin, Jiang Jieshi; and in Sinograms, 蔣介石.
 
It depends which transliteration system you endorse. Some people here profess a preference for Wade-Giles because, according to them, it's more elegant. It's a point of view I don't share and, since China uses Pinyin, then Pinyin is what I use too. (Even Taiwan is slowly shifting from Wade-Giles to Pinyin). So, in Wade-Giles, one writes Chiang Kai-shek; in Pinyin, Jiang Jieshi; and in Sinograms, 蔣介石.

OK... to me, they look like two completely different names, so that's confusing. Where do the 'K' sounds come from in the Wade-Giles version, if they're entirely absent in the Pinyin version?

Bearing in mind I've never heard his name said, and find pronunciation guides generally confusing...
 
OK... to me, they look like two completely different names, so that's confusing. Where do the 'K' sounds come from in the Wade-Giles version, if they're entirely absent in the Pinyin version?

Bearing in mind I've never heard his name said, and find pronunciation guides generally confusing...

The cantonese dialect. Same reason Canton is also known as Guangzhou.
 
The forces might help, but AFAIK Chiang only grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory due to the interference of American advisers. He had the Communists on the ropes in 1948, and it was only the insistence of the Americans that he try to make a settlement which allowed the Communist forces time to regroup.

I dunno.

I mean, Chiang's forces collapsed in 48 and 49. you might be thinking of his plan to finish them off in Harbin, but he was massively overextended. And was broke. And had no support.

Etc.
 
The forces might help, but AFAIK Chiang only grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory due to the interference of American advisers. He had the Communists on the ropes in 1948, and it was only the insistence of the Americans that he try to make a settlement which allowed the Communist forces time to regroup.

So the forces in themselves might help, simply as bodies on the ground, but it's nt like Chiang was short on those. I doubt American advice will help - in fact it's likely to do more harm than good.

I would like a source for this. I had not heard it before and did not quickly find it on the net.
 
I dunno.

I mean, Chiang's forces collapsed in 48 and 49. you might be thinking of his plan to finish them off in Harbin, but he was massively overextended. And was broke. And had no support.

Etc.
No, this is actually a different thing... although I was initially thinking of that. The impression given where I read about it isn't that he was overextended at all...
I would like a source for this. I had not heard it before and did not quickly find it on the net.
'China without Tears', by Arthur Waldron, in What If? Military Historians Imagine What Might have Been, ed. Robert Cowley, 2001.

Maybe Waldron is in a minority of one in his view, I really don't know. It seemed plausible, though. Basically, he presents a couple of different scenarios, the most important of which (on re-reading) is actually that Chiang/Jiang does not try to re-take Manchuria at all, instead leaving it for the Communists to have. Then, his forces would have been more concentrated, and it seems that both the US and USSR would have been, if not happy, then at least content with such a situation.The 'Chinese Democratic Republic' might have become another East Germany - but by marching on Manchuria (as Faeelin points out) he overextended his forces, and never quite finished them off.
 
Top